Chass and her mother have always been ready to move at short notice. For most of her life Chass thought of it as a game – her mother would pick a town at random and when they arrived they’d head straight to the library to find Chass’s new name - thanks to a Fabio-covered romance novel she became Chastity Pureheart (daughter of Allison) when they hit High Hopes, Alabama three years ago. Despite her pleas Chass was stuck with it - her mom has some very strong ideas about rituals and jinxes, and messing with the name finding would spell doom. Nothing’s more forbidden, though, than music – according to her mother it’s the worst kind of bad luck. Which is hard, because Chass loves to sing, and when she picks up her first guitar it feels more right than anything ever has.
When, at her sixteenth birthday party her friend Ben (the only one there apart from Chass and her mom), Chass not only gets a guitar of her own but her three years of secret lessons are revealed, Chass’s mother leaves. Though Chass knows her mother would never abandon her, Allison doesn’t come back, and then the local sheriff finds a pool of blood and a handful of her mother’s fake IDs (in names Chass never heard of) in an abandoned house. Now Chass only has a few days to keep out of foster care, find her mother, and get to the bottom of the reason why they’ve been on the run.
Fake ID is a nice combination of mystery and coming-of-age novel, as Chass begins to see her mother as a real person in her own right, with her own history. The triggering event (and subsequent pursuit of Chass and Allison) was a little far-fetched, and there’s a slightly stronger reliance on coincidence than I liked, but all in all this isn’t a bad YA novel. - Alex
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