Vince and Raedawn investigate what happened to a missing classmate in a racially divided town. Middle Row tries to tackle us/them mentalities as well as a separation of “the other” within a community. This is no easy feat to accomplish in about one hundred pages at a reading level of 2.4. As an Orca Soundings novel, this book is packaged as a high-action contemporary young adult mystery but reads in a simplistic and sometimes stilted manner. Olsen attempts to convey complicated relationships and feelings with a few simple words or carried by straightforward dialogue. Each character has various traits and relationships to others drawn out, but they are not fully developed or expanded upon due to length and syntax restrictions. Also, the text uses some Canadian dialect, which may initially throw off an American reading audience who may not be familiar with certain terms. This is a very specifically hi-lo styled novel and as such, is only recommended to the specific audience of reluctant readers ages twelve to fifteen with the targeted reading level.