Uncaged by John Sandford and Michele Cook

Published: July 8th, 2014
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Pages: 416
Copy: Library
Summary: Goodreads

A New York Times bestseller!

John Sandford (bestelling author of the Lucas Davenport "Prey" novels) and Michele Cook debut a high-octane thriller series about a ruthless corporation, unspeakable experiments, and a fight to expose the truth.

Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin.

Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog.

When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin—talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide—she’s concerned. When she gets a menacing visit from Singular’s security team, she knows: her brother’s a dead man walking.

What Singular doesn’t know—yet—is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that’s what it takes to save her brother. 

Review:

I was perusing the shelves at work the other day and found a copy of  'Outrage', which is in fact the sequel to 'Uncaged".  It sounded pretty good but of course I had to read 'Uncaged' first and set out to put a hold on it.  Was it worth the wait? Absolutely.

'Uncaged' was a fast paced thriller that catches you in unexpected places.  There's a lot going on and the pacing was really quite relentless.  Not many places to catch a breath.  Mr Sandford has taken all of the elements of his adult thrillers and just added some YA protagonists and the result is really quite marvelous.

Several characters stood out for me, but specifically Twist.  He is really quite an enigma, with strong rules and ideas and a  hidden heart of gold.  He's very uncompromising, but at the same time, breaks all the rules.  I would love to know more about him.  Shay was capable and believable and I loved the fact that although there are several male characters, there is no romance.  It just goes to prove that you don't need romance in YA to get a good story.  It's always fun, but it's not always necessary. 

With the subject matter of the book I can see some people getting rather upset - there are some nasty things done to animals - and that may put you off a bit, but it's worth getting past that hurdle, because the story is just that good.  I'm off now to read 'Outrage'.