Stranger Online

TodaysGirls.com #1

by Carol Smith, Terry K. Brown

To save her reputation at school and keep her position on the swim team, Amber must uncover the identity of the mysterious stranger who has been sending threatening email messages to her website.

Genres: Childrens, Young Adult

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2000

About the author

Librarian's Note: There is more than one author with this name.

Carol Smith was born in London and worked in the book trade, both in London and New York, before becoming a full-time writer herself. For much of that time she ran her own literary agency, focussed on finding and developing new talent, although now her own writing takes up most of her time. She lives in Kensington. She also writes under the name Alex Crowe.

Reviews

[Tiffany Spencer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stranger Online
PLOT: Amber starts getting mysterious, threatening, emails. She suspects a guy (Jake) that use to be a friend that's been having a hard family life and expects her to "help him out" by letting him cheat.

My Thoughts: It's just so weird to read today about someone being overly concerned about a rouge email messenger (and message). Today you'd just block the sender or send it to spam. Because so much junk comes through email people today wouldn't have even given it a second thought. Sure they'd be annoyed, but they wouldn't get as paranoid as Amber did. I don't know if that's saying things have gotten better or worse. Even though the message was about trusting in God and leaning not on your own understanding (which is also one of my favorite verses), and that he'll work out the toughest of problems there was another message about cheating and doing the right thing. I think the bigger message is don't let anyone take advantage of you for any reason in the name of being nice and trying to help someone out. People have definitely tried to run this game on me before and definitely have clarity in understanding what scriptures mean so you won't get confused. People who try to do what Jake did are DEFINITELY not your friends. And they don't all come correct like he did either. Because I have no doubt that if they didn't make him speak up he would have left Amber hanging and take the fall for what HE did. This is just an observation and not necessarily a criticism, but I have never read a book where they ALL do the same activity. Maybe two but everyone in this clique are swimmers (the perfectionist, the artsy one, the popular one, the fashionable one, the bubbly one, and the sassy one) That's kinda different.

RATING: 6

[Library Queen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugh, I'm torn on how to rate this. On one hand, it's really dated. On the other, when I first read it all the back in 2001 at the ripe old age of 12, I loved it. 3 stars now, but 4 stars from my 12yearold self.

[Lindsey (Books for Christian Girls) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mini ‘Books For Christian Girls’ review. It is not a full content review and will not receive one. These mini-reviews are years old and just for clarity on the rating the book received on Goodreads.

10/10/2015-
"Being written and published in 2000, this book is highly out-dated when it's trying to be trendy. Alex and Amber were brats to each other in this one just like in the later books."

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It leaves me wanting to find the rest of the series and read it... which means it must be a pretty good book!

[Laurie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like the resolution of the Stranger storyline.