CROSSING THE LINE (Raven Files #1) by Meghan Rogers

The story: Jocelyn was kidnapped as a kid and trained as an assassin by the North Korean KATO group. Now she's engineered an escape and wants to bring down the bad guys--but no one in the International Defense Agency's group of teen agents believes her. She'll have to prove herself to the team before she can get her revenge--but time is running out before a missile is launched and a war is started...and maybe before she falls in love with Scorpion, who totally hates her guts.

June Cleaver's ratings: Language R; Sexual content PG-13; Nudity PG; Substance abuse R; Magic & the occult G; GLBT content G; adult themes (kidnapping, torture, abuse, murder, political intrigue) PG-13; overall rating R.

Liz's comments: There's something hair-raising happening in every chapter of this book, which is a plus with teen readers. However, MS librarians should think carefully about it: Jocelyn goes through a graphic addiction recovery process; she was used to provide sexual favors for targets of her KATO assignments, and the language is graphic throughout. It also kind of bugged this adult reader how easily the teams got into all kind of supposedly super-high security locations because of a random kid's "mad skills"--but if your suspension-of-disbelief-o-meter can handle all that, it's an entertaining read. Total cliff-hanger, though--so prepare to buy at least one more.