The Face

 This was something I picked up because it looked like a quick, fun read and I was feeling "in-between" other books. It fit the bill. I, like most bookish people my age, I'm sure, was absolutely hooked on R.L. Stine as a kid. I read anything I could get my hands on, and I have a few favorites I read so many times I could recite parts of them. This is not one of those books. It was refreshing going into this knowing the kinds of tropes I'm likely to see and yet not knowing anything about the plot. I picked it up on a complete whim from Oyster, and I had fun with it. I did see the ending coming, but it was extremely close there, which was refreshing. Things were not blatantly telegraphed throughout (or at least I felt that way--your mileage may vary if you are not reading it at two in the morning, admittedly) Amnesia is kind of a fun plot device, though the length to which it was carried seemed a bit much. Not that our main character, Martha, can't remember, but that apparently everyone has been told not to talk about it and has obeyed that decree to such an extent that so much can be hidden from her. It smacked a bit of author intervention, there, but this was such a quick read I was willing to forgive it. Things were not stretched out too far to be believable, given the length of the book. If you're feeling nostalgic or just looking for a quick breather between other books, this should fit the bill quite nicely.