An airliner explodes over the Atlantic ocean, killing 345 people. As usual, the crash investigators and the media blame terrorism before anything else, but this cannot be confirmed as the cause.
When a twelve-year-old calls a police hotline while distressed, blaming his father for the plane crash. The Cherubs are sent in to investigate and try to help the boy, but it may lead nowhere as the boy has a history of violence and emotional problems.
James is now getting too old for the regular missions, and so he has to do work experience. He lands a job at the literal worst place, a fast-food restaurant. He also has to work with his ex-girlfriend, Kerry. How is he going to get through this?
This book focuses on Lauren and Jake, as they are now of age to go on full missions. They are also around the age of Fahim, the boy who reported his father. Fahim is a twelve-year-old Muslim boy who has an abusive father, and who is bullied at school nearly every day. His father usually takes out his anger on his mother, but he has started to move to him as well. Fahim doesn’t know how much more he can take before he breaks.
This book has definitely been one of the better Cherub books, with the addressing of some popular social issues. Fahim may be a fictional boy, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t real kids who have his issues. It is sad that he suffers from both bullying at school and abuse at home. Luckily he was able to find friends in the Cherub members, but in real life, this might not be the case.
The biggest problem that I had with this book was its portrayal of Muslim children and families. I have several friends in real life who are Muslim and live in a city where there are a multitude of different religions. The only two kids that are Muslim that I have seen in this whole series have been in this book. One of the kids ate bacon, saying that he is “more Muslim some days than others”, and the other kid had an abusive/crazed father. I would be fine with it if there were other representations of Muslim kids in this series. But when the only two kids in the series either don’t follow the rules of their religion or have abusive parents, I start to question it. I hope that they will be portrayed in a more positive light in more books to come.
I did appreciate the fact that James was a lesser character in this novel, as I can’t seem to make myself like him any longer. I only hope that Jake will have some more defining character traits. For half the book, I was reading Jake as James and thought that he was on the mission even though they were two separate characters. As the series comes to a close, I want to see more growth from Lauren and her friends Jake and Bethany.
The book started off slow and it took me from before winter break until now to actually finish it. By the time I got to the middle, I was finally drawn in enough to actually finish the novel. The old cover was one of my least favorite covers in the entire series, as it really didn’t fit the title and actually rather confused me. The Sleepwalker actually refers to Fahim’s emotional distress and has nothing to do with the plane. The new cover isn’t as bad, but I still wish that the title had more to do with the actual story.
Overall, this wasn’t the best book in the Cherub series because of some of the issues, but it wasn’t the worst. I would rate it 3/5, but the slowness of the beginning of the plot and the character issues make me take a point off, as it took me far too long to get through this 336-page book.
Overall Rating: 2/5
