Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman

excerpt from pg. 179 - "It appears that I'll be sneaking out of the house tonight to see the one person my parents have forbidden me to associate with. The two of us will wander off into the woods at 1:00 in the morning and cut through a chain so we can break into a condemned structure before they born it down. And, meanwhile, her camera will be feeding the footage back to her website so that if we don't come back, the authorities can -- what was her phase? -- oh, yeah -- find our bodies."

Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman is about Ryan and Sarah, best friends who have a history of getting into dangerous situations. Just recently, Ryan and Sarah were exploring an old, abandoned mining dredge near their small Oregon town, and Ryan was seriously injured. Sarah, an amateur videographer, continues going back to the dredge with her video camera, searching for the strange "thing" they saw the night they were there. Ryan is stuck in his hospital bed (then later his bed at home) with a shattered leg, so he begins recording his experiences in his journal. The story is told through Ryan's journal and Sarah's videos. Through the pages of the book and the videos available at sarahfincher.com (with passwords found throughout the book), the mystery of what really happened to them and why unfolds. The last part of the story is told entirely through Sarah's video camera as a "live feed" of their last visit to the dredge in the middle of the night.

I thought this was a really interesting concept - merging a book with videos to support the story. It was fun reading Ryan's thoughts and going to the computer to see Sarah's ideas. I enjoyed this book a lot! The ending was creepy! It definitely made me think about what would happen next. I would not recommend reading this book if you can't watch the videos along with it. The videos are an intregal part of the story and help the reader fill in the gaps of the story. The final video is vital. Cool idea - good book! The next book in this series comes out in October of 2009. Also, for you 39 Clues Series fans, this author (Patrick Carman) wrote the 5th book in that series, The Black Circle, coming out in August of 2009.