Losing William is a great story; it is filled with messages about pre-adolescent anxieties, marital breakdowns and kidnapping. There are examples of the different problems and hardships that children go through. The book gets very tense in places, and holds the attention of the reader. Keri walker is a 12-year-old girl, and her life is almost perfect. She's a smart girl who is very popular and has the perfect family.

Then one day her parents tell her they are getting divorced, her best friend moves away to New York and everything just starts to go wrong.

She is selected to be the recipient of a free scholarship to any college of her choice and is the best player in the schools A netball team. Many of the other girls get jealous and begin to dislike her. This is horrible for her because all children ever want to be at school is in the 'in crowd'.

Many of the girls tease her and make her feel down and left out. The problems at home make things even worse. Her dad has left her mum for a younger woman, her younger brother Nicky has been getting into trouble at school for stealing other children's belongings, her three year old brother William has always been a hassle and her mum is always depressed and hardly notices keri is alive.

Then one day Keri is left responsible for her little brother, William, in the shopping mall. She turns her back on him for a minute and the next thing she knows he is gone. The police are informed and her mother and father are angry and worried. Her father is made even more furious when Keri accuses Beth, her father's new girlfriend, of kidnapping William. Keri dislikes Beth because she is the one behind all their problems.

In this time of need she finds out who her real friends are and she realizes how selfish and rude she has been to her parents, especially her father and his new girlfriend.

Losing William is an excellent book. I recommend it for young teens. It's the first in a series of stories about Keri and her friends. I give it five out of five, as it is full of twists and turns, pain and depression and shows how much life can change with only a few small circumstances.

Life is not good at the moment for 12 year old Keri Walker.

She received an award for high achievement at school but her so-called friends are not supportive at all. Her parents have decided to separate and she is supposed to be understanding and help make dad leaving home easy for her little brothers. All she wants is dad to come home and life to be the way it was – happy – or was it?

Then Keri's little brother disappears from the shopping mall when she leaves him briefly. Has he been kidnapped or did he wander away, and where is he now, and will he come back?

This is a story of relationships between family and friends offering some life lessons as well. A great read for intermediate aged children, for both boys and girls.

Keri sometimes speaks before she thinks and in this book Keri is ostracized when she wins an award at school.

She is already feeling miserable after her best friend, Jessie, emigrates to America with her family. The unpleasantness at school rapidly escalates and Keri is so caught up with her misery that is comes as a total shock when her parents sit her down and announce that they are splitting up.

Keri feels things couldn't possibly get worse but they do when she loses her three year old brother at the shopping mall. While enduring this nightmare Keri discovers who her real friends are and with their help she sets out to discover what happened to her brother.

This is Jenni Francis's first book and she intends it to be the first in a series. This is a story about adolescence, marital break ups and kidnap. Marriage breakups seem to be on the increase in New Zealand society today so a story about this issue is both tiopical and relevant.

But over 76 per cent of children in New Zealand live with two parents. It seems a long time since I read a book about children living in a regular family.

Francis writes about the pain and trauma that comes with a family break up in a sensitive manner. The voice of the character, Keri, is very credible. Keri is at intermediate school so I feel Losing William will appeal to girl readers aged 11 to 14 years.

When Keri Walker loses her younger brother at the local shopping mall, her life turns to custard. When a police search is fruitless, Keri, and the friends she thought she’d never have, set out to look for him.

This is a story of Keri; missing a friend who had recently moved to New York, being bullied for being smart at school, and finding out who her real friends are.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Very few books are exciting enough to stop me putting them down before I finish them. Sadly not even the new Harry Potter book. I read this book from the title to the ISBN code before putting it down. I especially enjoyed reading about Keri’s friend Jess, as I can relate to Keri in this part...