Live, Laugh, Kidnap

January 1, 2022
A sweet scheme goes hilariously wrong for four teens blundering through adolescent thickets. Violet, Montana, is on the way up thanks to the media and merchandising campaigns of local megachurch pastor Jay Reaps and his equally glossy wife, Ree. But their hunky son, Dustin, really wants out--and signs on with three chance-met young women to engineer his own kidnapping for a share of the presumed reward. His confederates have motives of their own: Zoe hopes she and her secret girlfriend can leave town and closet behind; getting caught with illicit Adderall has cost Holly her prep school scholarship; and an illicit smartphone has given Genesis glimpses of a world and Christian faith that promise more than the stagnant New Age commune in which she's grown up. As the harebrained caper plays out in the alternating point-of-view chapters, Noone folds in a rich assortment of ruminations, confessions, bonding moments, personal epiphanies, snogging, and occasional prayers to go with the flurry of impulsive acts and comical scrambles. Despite the tale's farcical tone, she also shapes the minds and developing characters of her cast with a light but respectful hand. Even glib and shallow Dustin gets to come off in the end as not entirely self-absorbed, and though the older adults in the all-White cast are the usual largely clueless and mockable bunch, at least his parents do seem genuinely distressed by his disappearance. The upbeat end leaves everyone unscathed and wiser. Read, hoot, cherish this satirical romp. (Fiction. 13-18)

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Starred review from June 20, 2022
Noone’s (Layoverland) laugh-out-loud novel centers four white teens’ unconventional scheme to topple their Violet, Mont., town’s glitzy Christian megachurch. Holly, Zoe, and Genesis feel as if they have nothing in common. Prep school student Holly is spending the summer in Violet with her estranged father after an incident back home in L.A.; dry-humored Zoe’s financial precarity prevents her from running away from Violet’s closed-minded environment with her secret girlfriend; and influencers, lured by the neighboring Hope Harvest Church run by affluent Pastor Reaps and his wife, have turned reserved Genesis’s once blissful New Age commune home into a crowded social media hot spot. But when the Reaps’ son, ministry golden boy Dustin, tasks the girls with faking his kidnapping to escape his controlling parents, the teens find themselves biting off more than they can chew, and what begins as an eccentric disappearing act evolves into an over-the-top megachurch takedown. While the premise is largely satirical on the surface, Noone capably employs alternating perspectives—and a smattering of romance—to explore faith, societal pressures and expectations, and the sometimes-all-consuming fear of impending adulthood. This riotous caper, and its similarly hilarious cast, is a joy. Ages 14–up. Agent: Dana Murphy, Book Group.