The author’s choice to make the emails realistic by interspersing a few slang terms and abbreviations is uneven and inauthentic (either use “u” or you, but stop having the same character alternate – either spell it out, or don’t! Argh!). Still, the story is engrossing and unpredictable. As an entertaining and lighter subplot, Kayleigh tries to determine her professor’s sign through process of elimination. Friendships develop and are challenged as truths are revealed, and two of the three teens don’t take the project seriously, skewing the results and testing the scientific method Kayleigh is required to follow. Mixing issues of identity and mortality, Hrdlitschka shows that everyone has secrets to hide. She convinces her professor to let her study astrology and asks her fellow online classmates, all Leos, to track their horoscopes and report back to her as to the accuracy of the predictions. Told in emails, journal entries and horoscopes, this story of a group of distance learners helping a ‘net friend with her science project tackles the adage that “on the internet, everyone is a dog.” Fifteen-year-old cancer patient Kayleigh is a Gemini who writes letters to her twin on another plane (one that she isn’t eager to join).
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