You’ll Thank Me for This

Karin , the 12-year-old heroine of this suspenseful psychological thriller set in the Netherlands from Siegal (The Anatomy Lesson), still struggles to accept her stepfather, Martijn , two years after her photojournalist father, Pieter , was fatally shot by a sniper while on assignment in Syria. With Martijn and her mother constantly fighting, Karin welcomes all the more her first dropping, the Dutch tradition of blindfolding and leaving groups of teens and preteens in the middle of a national forest to test their abilities to work as a team and survive in extreme circumstances. Grouped with two lovestruck teens who take off on their own and a shy girl her age who disappears, Karin remains confident on her own, since she’s been dropped in the area where she and Pieter used to hike and camp. The tension rises when she realizes she’s lost and being stalked, and the forest she knew so well begins to seems menacing, forcing her to draw on her experiences with her father to survive. Three-dimensional characters match the clever plotting. Siegal knows how to keep the pages turning. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Assoc. (Mar.)