Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler

I came across Frozen Fire in the bookstore.  I hadn't heard of it before, but the cover was really cool and the summary on the jacket flap sounded pretty interesting.  Tim Bowler is also a winner of the Carnegie Medal, so this book has to be good..right?!

From the book jacket:
"It starts with a phone call.  "I'm dying," a voice tells Dusty.
     Who is he and how did he get her phone number?  Dusty wants no part of this strange boy... until he begins saying things that only someone who knows her intimately could say.  And saying things that lead her to think he knows the whereabouts of her brother, who disappeared over two years ago.  Suddenly drawn in,  Dusty very much wants to save this boy.  Trouble is, she cannot find him- he won't let himself be found.  He is too dangerous, he says.  There are mobs of people who agree and who want to see this boy disappear... and who will hunt anyone who stands in their way.
     From Carnegie Medal-winning author Tim Bowler comes a gripping, hair-raising mystery about a boy not of this world, and a girl determined to protect him."

My thoughts:
It has been a really long time since I have read a book that I had to force myself to finish.  It isn't that the story was bad... it was just really, really slow!  The plot was interesting, but it took forever to get to the good parts.  I felt like much of the book was a repetitive cycle of Dusty searching for the elusive boy and people searching for Dusty.  I was ready to see how the story would finally end... only to be really confused with the ending.  Throughout the book Dusty was tortured by the unexplained disappearance of her brother.  She was searching for answers and felt that the mysterious boy held the key to finding him.  There was a lot of build-up surrounding this and I was disappointed when the  real reason behind her brother's disappearance was revealed.  The fact that we never even got to find out who the strange boy was or where he came from seriously bugged me too!  I just found it very difficult to get into this book.  The pace was too slow and although the characters seemed well developed, I found it hard to feel a connection with any of them.  Well, at least the cover was cool!