Following in his Father's Footsteps

Hello Everyone!

I recently started a book called Ali Cross. This is a mystery novel about how a boy’s friend goes missing randomly and he has to try and find him. Throughout the book, there are surprising ways of investigation that lead to the mystery being solved.

At the beginning of the book, Ali Cross (the main character) and his friend Gabe Qualls are walking back from school together. They part ways at a street and the next several days of school, Ali doesn’t see his friend. His dad, Alex Cross, is a detective so Ali decides to tell him about it. His dad then does the investigation by himself which causes Ali to start to rebel which is my favorite part.

He rebels slowly though. First, he begins trying to get access to his own detective he can talk to. This doesn’t go so well and when he does try to do the work by himself, police get suspicious of him. His father also opposes this because he feels Ali shouldn’t be doing such things because he’s “just a kid.” 

My favorite part of this book is Ali’s main source of information regarding Gabe’s location. He does this through a video game; surprisingly, Gabe is online sometimes which Ali found abnormal due to him being missing. Since they played together on PlayStation, Ali was able to conclude that— well it’s pretty simple what he was able to conclude. It’s that the person he was with was most likely someone he knew. This led to Ali being even more curious which led to the rebellion.

If there was something that I had to dislike about the book, it would be the lack of outside life from Ali that’s not related to the mystery. Even though there was a lot of time with his family, I just feel like there should be more of a personal thing that he does. Like a sports’ practice, an honor roll, or something like that to give the book more substance so his time to find out things about the mystery would seem limited which would make it more exciting.

Anyways, in conclusion I think this book is a 9/10. It has a great plot, great characters, great romance (I was told not to get into that) and a great conclusion. It is for middle schoolers though, so if you’re not into younger people books, you probably wouldn’t like it as much.

I hope you enjoyed my review! 

Until next time…

Peace!

Marshall