Rebecca Ansari

The Asylum by Rebecca Ansari 

The only thing more mysterious than the disappearance of Charlie and Ana’s siblings is the fact that no one other than the 12-year-old best friends even seems to notice. Every trace of Lily and Finn vanished with them – family photos diminished by one, carpet stains lifted, the baseball-cracked hallway mirror now flawless. Most disturbing are the blank and confused stares from their parents any time they bring up the subject. Charlie finds it hard to look for answers in a world full of adults that think he and Ana are either over-imaginative or downright delusional. But when Jonathon, their new 17-year-old baseball coach, catches wind of Charlie and Ana’s search, he not only believes them, he claims to know exactly where Lily and Finn are – and why they are there. With Jonathon’s help, Charlie and Ana can follow the same path as their siblings, possibly restoring the lives they used to have. They know Jonathon has no idea how to get them all back home. What they don’t know is that The Asylum’s keeper has no intention of letting them go.

The Book Doctors:

We like this pitch because it’s unexpected.  And mysterious.  The siblings just disappear, and no one remembers that they even existed.  We like the detail that they’ve vanished from the family photos, and that the hallway mirror is suddenly not cracked anymore.  Good details! We don’t know enough about our hero.  We want you to show us inside him–how confused and sad and determined he is.  We like this character Jonathan, but we’d like to know a little bit more about him, too.  We do think it’s a little weird that The Asylum’s keeper just appears out of nowhere at the very end.  It is mysterious, but it just doesn’t send a chill down my spine that it should because it’s out of left field.  I want more of a sense of who they are and what their intentions are.