I adore a well spun revenge tale. The premise for Endangered promised such a story, but unfortunately the follow through was… lacking. Lauren “Panda” Daniels goes to a normal high school with the usual social divisions: the bullies, the kids keeping their heads down, the popular kids, the freaks, etc. Panda is one of the students keeping their heads down during the day, but on her off time she likes to get revenge on the bullies and unprincipled by photoblogging their misdeeds. Knock down one of the little guys and you’re bound to get a taste of your own medicine. When an anonymous photographer threatens to reveal Panda as the photoblogger, things turn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse.
Doesn’t that sound like an amazingly fun book to read!? I wish it had been. Instead things got melodramatic and uninteresting pretty quickly. Part of the problem was that it was very easy to spot Panda’s blackmailer, but the other problem is that nobody in this book is a logical human being, including Panda. At least Panda has the excuse of being an inexperienced teenager. The adults in Endangered are all morons, from the police to her teachers to her parents. I mean at one point Panda gets beaten up by classmates and then her parents ground her. What the what?! Tip of the iceberg. I honestly only gave this one two stars because the premise was great and the writing style was decent.
