Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Reality Check by Peter Abrahams

Reality Check by Peter Abrahams

Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Apr 2009, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

QB of the varsity football team. Passing grades in all his classes. Dating the hottest—and smartest—girl at school. Summer job paying more than minimum wage. Things in Cody's world seem to be going pretty well. Until, that is, his girlfriend, Clea, is sent off to boarding school across the country, and a torn ACL ends his high school football career.

But bad things come in threes—or in Cody's case, sixes and twelves—and the worst is yet to come. While limping through town one day, Cody sees a newspaper heading: "Local Girl Missing." Clea, now his ex, has disappeared from her boarding school in Vermont, and the only clue is a letter she sent to Cody the morning of her disappearance. With that as his guide, Cody sets out to find out what happened. Once in Vermont, he unearths the town's secrets—and finds out that football isn't the only thing he's good at.

Reality Check is another edge-of-your-seat suspense novel by the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author of Down the Rabbit Hole.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Book Awards

  • award image Edgar Awards, 2010

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Cody and most of the teens he encounters - both out west and in Vermont - are complex characters with believable motivations and faults, plot issues aside. Ages 12-up." - Publishers Weekly

"A solid mystery." - School Library Journal

"The climax is unexpected…readers will be frantically turning pages." - Kirkus Reviews

"Starred Review. A fine thriller that is pitched to attract everyone from reluctant readers to sports fans to romantic idealists. " - Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)

This information about Reality Check was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Andrew Francis

Couldn't Put Down! 8/10
From the in-depth opening letting us connect with Cody and his relation to Clea, which allowed us to really get the emotions going when she goes missing, to the surprise plot twist ending, to the character development and relation building, this book has it all.

I read the ending late at night, and the suspense building up kept me from being able to go to bed! I loved how complex the mystery was, which got me excited when I was able to piece together every little clue into a complete story of what happened. The author uses so, so many descriptive words I felt immersed in the story, as I was Cody and I was trying to find Clea.

Only one gripe though, it seems the climax and resolution happen in the span of the last two chapters, which for someone like me who constantly wants new information, kinda of got me bored. Other than that though, great book! 8/10

(Would be 10/10 if the ending was prolonged and if there were less cussing, like seriously there was an F-Bomb like every two or so pages near the ending; the word started to lose its meaning.)

Jhon

Toola
I loved Toola (the main character), she really showed some moral characteristics such as when she stopped following her teacher on Instagram and when she said sorry to Hilda for giving her a massive front wedgie, just amazing!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Peter Abrahams Author Biography

Photo credit: Lily Gray

Peter Abrahams is the best-selling author of A Perfect Crime, The Tutor, The Fan, and Lights Out, for which he received an Edgar® Award nomination; and Down The Rabbit Hole, a novel for children. He lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, with his wife and children. Writing as Spencer Quinn, he is also the author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series that starts with Dog On It (2009) with the latest book Scents and Sensibility that was published in 2015.

Author Interview
Link to Peter Abrahams's Website

Other books by Peter Abrahams at BookBrowse
  • Oblivion jacket

6 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Reality Check, try these:

  • The Slip jacket

    The Slip

    by Lucas Schaefer

    Published 2026

    About this book

    For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.

  • Margo's Got Money Troubles jacket

    Margo's Got Money Troubles

    by Rufi Thorpe

    Published 2025

    About this book

    A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman's attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

  • Those Pink Mountain Nights jacket

    Those Pink Mountain Nights

    by Jen Ferguson

    Published 2024

    About this book

    In her remarkable second novel following her Governor General's Award-winning debut, The Summer of Bitter and Sweet, Jen Ferguson writes about the hurt of a life stuck in past tense, the hum of connections that cannot be severed, and one week in a small, snowy town that changes everything.

We have 10 read-alikes for Reality Check, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Literary Fiction

Browse all Literary Fiction books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!
Win This Book
Win Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…

Enter

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
  • Book Jacket
    Somebody Worth Killing
    by Jessica Payne
    Meet Nadia Davis, loving mom, devoted wife, secret assassin… and she needs a babysitter.
Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

The C is A R

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.