DESTINATION UNKNOWN

Destination Unknown by Amy Clipston

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


DESTINATION UNKNOWN Review
By Amy Clipston

What is worse than your boyfriend breaking up with you on Valentine’s Day, while your two best friends’ boyfriends give them nice gifts? Could the D on a calculus test be worse? Or how about the fact that your mother says you need a tutor to bring that grade up and not ruin your grade point average to get into college? Is being grounded for two weeks or seeing your best friends in a different light worse?

Eighteen-year-old Whitney Richards faces all of these problems in Author Amy Clipston’s YA novel DESTINATION UNKNOWN. That seems like quite a lot for a teen to deal with her senior year of high school. Deal with them, Whitney must. To add to her troubles, Whitney is falling for Taylor Martinez, also a senior and the tutor who’s helping her with calculus. He’s hot, he’s nice, and he’s different from the jocks she has been dating. He’s not one of the popular crowd that makes up most of Whitney‘s friendships, and her mother totally disapproves of him since he lives on the wrong side of town. Time after time, Whitney and her mother clash over what Whitney wants for her life and what her mother has planned for her daughter. When matters get too complicated, Whitney prays to God for help in her messed up life.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN is a story about peer pressure, a manipulative mother (according to Whitney), misunderstandings, and lies (or not telling the whole truth the way Whitney looks at a situation). The author has created characters that are so real they might be the teen next door, the teen at church or at school, or your own teen. Most teens reading the story will be able to relate to Whitney’s dilemma, or perhaps to one of the other characters through themselves or someone they know. Sometimes we’re so caught up in what we want we close our minds and do not truly listen to the other person’s reasons for what they do. I recommend this book for classroom libraries and school libraries as well as your own private library. The story may provide exactly what some young reader needs in his/her life at the moment.

I received an Advanced Reading Copy of this book from Zondervan Publishing for my honest review.

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