“It’s been exactly a year to the day–today is my fifteenth birthday, by the way, and I like my cake chocolate with white icing, in case anyone cares–since I started running away, and about two and a half weeks since I’ve been on the run full time.”

From Hollis Gillespie’s Unaccompanied Minor.

April Mae Manning has spent the majority of her life flying through the sky on countless WorldAir flights.  Since her parents met as flight attendants, she’s been able to travel the world on free-for-employee seats, and now that her WorldAir pilot stepfather (Ash Manning) is involved in a nasty custody battle over April with her mother, she now gets to travel across the country for her visitations.  Except for the past few weeks, things have been a bit different, because April has been using her knowledge of the flight attendant lifestyle, Ash’s total disinterest in her life, the anonymity of unaccompanied minors in big airports, and her out-on-mental-health-to-avoid-jail-time-leave mother’s ID badge to live in airports across the country.  While Ash’s girlfriend Kathy is supposed to look out for April legally, she has only used her position as guardian as litem (she makes recommendations to the court) to wrongly grant Ash custody.  Now through a bizarre and dangerous turn of events, April finds herself in the middle of a highjack situation with only an off-duty cop (Officer Ned), another unaccompanied minor (Malcolm), his emotional-support dog (Captain Beefheart), and a spunky, elderly flight attendant (Flo) to help her stop the hijackers before they blow up the plane.

Gillespie’s first novel is an interesting read from the first sentence to the last page.  April’s narration style is witty and quick, making the book very easy to become interested in and also remain captivating throughout.  The story is filled with “insider information” from the world of flight attendants, airports, and airplanes; this really seems to make the book feel more mature than some young adult books.  Unaccompanied Minor is a fun, unique story that takes off quickly and provides a non-stop action adventure, and is definitely worth the read.