I have a really hard time choosing books for trips.   What you may ask, just take one of the three books you are currently reading!  Ah, but you would be quite mistaken.  First, I am very likely (unless I just started it) to finish any of them while in the middle of the trip (or worse, halfway through a plane flight).  Second, especially on a vacation, I want to bring something new and potentially exciting.  I don’t want the same old book I’ve been reading before bed.  I want a vacation book!

So alright, I’ll bring an entirely new book.  Except well, that too leaves me open to problems.  What if, on the plane on the way there, I decide I’m not really that “into” the book I brought.  Perhaps I brought the wrong book for the mood (often a hard thing to gauge when one embarks on a journey) or maybe the book just stinks.  Then what?

Let me try this again. Clearly new books are the way to go, but I’ll need a backup.  To be safe probably two backups.  Of course if I’m going on a trip of more than a few days, one with some downtime for reading, I will likely read one book at least, so to be quite certain I’ll need three backups. 

OK got it.  Four new books.

You see my dilemma.  Thankfully this past week I was only going to Chicago (a two hour plane ride) on a family vacation that promised little down time so I only brought two books, one of which was Peter and The Secret of Rundoon.  I’ve been reading this series, mostly because Jesse and I read #1 & 2 “together” (by which I mean I read them and about three weeks later he finished them and we chatted about it). 

I finished half the book on the plane ride there and the second half on the plane ride back; it was the perfect book for a flight, engaging and light.  But overall, I’m disappointed and it’s not just the disappointment of the ending of a series (what is it about modern fantasy lit and series?  Can’t anyone just write one book anymore??).  While this book answers a lot of questions, such as how the croc gets the clock inside him, who the lost boys are and why the inhabitants of the island don’t age, there are still more questions that were left unanswered.  Which is alright I guess.  It’s not the authors’ job to fill in all the blanks.  There is however, one big gaping hole that I can’t reconcile.  In the beginning we find out (or rather, Molly and George find out) who Peter’s real parents are.  They’re talked about throughout the whole book; in fact they’re pivotal to the entire plot of this book. 

Yet we never find out what happened to them!

 Peter doesn’t seem too bothered by this (since doesn’t remember his parents anyway – his reaction is something like Hey you knew my parents?? Cool!) but I am.  What happened to them?  Are they dead?  Are they alive?  Have the minions of the dark side trapped them somewhere?  We don’t know!  I know that parents are either well utilized plot devices or otherwise unnecessary plot movers in YA lit, but this is ridiculous.

Book number three left me waiting for Book number four, which sadly, does not exist.