Giles, Gail.
WHAT HAPPENED TO CASS MCBRIDE? : A NOVEL
Boston : Little, Brown, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 0316166383

(3 booktalks)

Keep calm.  Take slow breaths.  Keep him talking.  I need to do everything I can to get out of this.  Use all my skills.  My father taught me well.  He could talk people into anything.  And I need to do some serious talking now.  Don't panic.  Say the right things.  Focus.  Block it out.  Stop thinking about where I am.   Stop remembering that I am buried underground with only Kyle knowing where I am.  Stop remembering that Kyle wants me to suffer.  Stop remembering that Kyle wants me to die.

Booktalk #2

"Words are teeth.And they eat me alive. Feed on my corpse instead." These are the words on the suicide note pinned to David Kirby’s body. After asking Cass McBride out, David finds a note she leaves for a friend in which she laughs about an invitation from someone so low on the food chain. Then David hangs himself. His college brother, Kirby believing that Cass is responsible for David’s death, kidnaps her, drugs her, and buries her in a wooden box underneath the ground. He inserts a plastic tube from the surface into the box for oxygen, and like a maniac, waits for her to talk. Cassie McBride is no ordinary teenage girl; she has been thoroughly schooled by her salesman father to know how to manipulate people to get what she wants. Slowly, through these narrations, you can see what caused David's suicide and Kyle's anger and you will learn why Cass behaves as she does. The story is about both Kyle and Cassie, and by the end of the book you may dislike, and yet, sympathizes with each of them. (Mary M. Silgals, Trident Academy, for South Carolina Young Adult Book Awards, 2008-2009)

Booktalk #3

After his brother commits suicide, Kyle Kirby kidnaps and buries alive Cass McBride, the girl he holds responsible. Cass talks to Kyle through a plastic air tube and frantically tries to get him to set her free. She fights for her life both physically and mentally before time runs out. (Florida Teen Read, 2009)