Meet Lucy Hill, a 26 year old Missouri  children’s librarian, who knows that she hasn’t quite made the best choices in life, but doesn’t really know how to do anything about it. She’s in a rut, with no proper love interest, not much of a social life, living in a shared theatre run by larger than life gay thespians – she just needs to ensure she doesn’t flush the loo whilst a show is on!

Enter Ian Drake a 10 year old precocious, manipulative yet lovable book worm, who has a passion for books that is compounded by his overbearing mother’s evangelical religious beliefs that make reading anything vaguely magical, about weaponry, the theory of evolution, Halloween, occult religions or adult content a violation of her rules. However anything encompassing the breadth of God should be actively promoted.

Being slightly perturbed by Ian’s mother’s home made law enforcement in the wake of a wealth of excellent children’s literature, Lucy assists Ian in smuggling out contraband books. Whilst in cahoots she learns one day of Ian’s mothers’ fears that he may be destined to become gay and has therefore started to send him to anti-gay religious youth classes. Troubled by this she becomes concerned for Ian, his home life and the impact the overt fundamental religious practices will have on him. She observes changes in Ian.

Things escalate when one very early morning she finds Ian camped out in the library, strongly opposed to ever going home. He eventually feigns agreement to Lucy taking him home, only to employ his finest evasive, petulant and frankly controlling behaviour to send her on a wild goose chase and eventual road trip spanning American states from Missouri to Vermont lasting over a week.

Up until the this point the book is completely engaging, but the dubious circumstances whereby a smart professional seeks and fails to find Ian’s home contact details through the local directory rather than using the library records creates incredulity. To then let a child lead you on a thwarted journey, never engaging local police or thinking of the implications of letting a child take control to the point of no return, nor thinking about the impact on the parents beggars belief. This part of the book is clumsy and probably its Achilles heel, but it is also the pivotal point of the story.

This is a book about farce and so if you’re going to enjoy it you just have to go with it and let the comedic story unfold. Throughout the characters are larger than life, from the gay thespians, to Lucy’s dubious Russian immigrant father and his fugitive past, her equally far-fetched aunt and uncle with their ferrets, the cringe-worthy would be crooning boyfriend, and the mystery undisguised man tailing her. Eventually all things must come to an end and together Lucy and Ian must come up with a plan to return home without Lucy getting charged with child abduction amongst a catalogue of other misdemeanours. How will they do it or have things just gone too far?

The story sets itself up to be focused upon Ian, but this is a red herring as really it’s all about Lucy and what she’s going to do with her life. Ian merely acts as a catalyst via chaos. It probably couldn’t work any other way as there are too many heavy issues to get stuck into such as parental versus children’s choice, religion and sexuality, but this does mean that we never learn what impact the adventure has really had on Ian or his parents. In all it felt like your were reading through a film and to this end I can envisage its transformation onto the screen with someone like Sandra Bullock as the leading actress. It does act as a homage to excellent children’s literature, but it would be interesting to learn other readers views as I anticipate it will be a book that you either love or rate as mediocre for its lack of credibility.

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