Synopsis:
Trapped in a coffin, popular teen Cass McBride works to find a strategy to reach freedom, even as the police trace down dead lead after dead lead.

Review:
I used to be obsessed with a book called The Girl in the Box by Ouida Sebestyen, about a girl imprisoned in a windowless room. She has is a typewriter in her backpack, so she writes out her story and feeds the pages through the window. She probably wouldn’t have died in the end if she’d had a laptop that could steal the nearest WiFi connection, but I bet it’s still a gripping YA read.

What Happened to Cass McBride doesn’t have quite the same feeling of inevitability, since the book opens with the kidnapper confessing to the police, but Giles is more about exploring character relationships than she is about scaring her readers. Despite the torture-porn premise, the book isn’t a horror story. The multiple points of view isn’t my favorite technique, but I did get involved in the inner life that Giles created for each of the characters.