Three things jumped out at me when I first saw the cover of this book:

- The author: (Todd Strasser? I LOVE his stuff!)

- The title: (Wish You Were Dead?  I am SO there!)

- The picture: (Is that a hand reaching out to kill me?  Or a hand reaching out for help?)

We librarians like to think that we are above judging a book by its cover.  But sometimes we do, and with Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser it definitely paid off.

Wish You Were Dead begins with a blog entry, one of many that appears throughout this book.  Both the blogger and the people who comment on the blog are anonymous, so we don't know who is thinking what.  What we do learn is that the girl writing the blog is unpopular and unhappy.  She hates herself and she hates other people, with the beautiful and popular Lucy Cunningham at the top of that list.  We also learn that some of the people who comment on her blog are supportive, while others are mean and insulting.  And then something strange starts happening.  Each time the girl wishes someone dead on her blog, that person suddenly disappears in real life.

Is the blogger a murderer or a kidnapper?  Did she make these people vanish with her words?  Or is someone else behind these disappearances?

Wish You Were Dead takes many twists and turns; you might be able to predict some of them, but you'll never guess ALL of them.  And that's what makes for an exciting page-turner of a book.

Wish You Were Dead appears on the 2010 Stuff For the Teen Age list.