"Found" review

Has your life ever bottomed out?  Has everything you had going for you crumbled around you, and you found yourself with nothing left to live for?  Did all the relationships in your life vanish over time?  Are you alone in the world? 

In Found by Jason Smith, Noah Carpenter can sympathize with you:  His relationships with his girlfriend and her son have deteriorated to the point where they no longer care about each other, he just lost his job because he flew off the handle in a drunken rage, and then he get's pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol before trying to run from the police officer.

Rather than taking Noah to the police station, the officer drops Noah off at a temp agency, where a man named Simon reveals  that he is over three hundred years old, and he shows Noah a sphere-shaped orb that is able to see everything that Noah has ever done in his life.  After this, Simon gives Noah a new place to live, a new identity, and a vague contract to live up to.

Over the course of the book, Noah's journey becomes a journey of redemption, of trying to help make things right for other people because he had failed miserably to do so in his old life.  The beginning of the story is so hair-raising and raises so many questions that you will end up reading through the book fairly quickly in an effort to see if those questions get answered.

Unfortunately, Found doesn't quite deliver when it comes to answering the questions that get raised.  For example, while the book did explain how the sphere orb affected Simon's aging, it never even tried to answer what Simon's life was like before his encounter with the Sphere.  While the story explains who the first person to encounter the spheres was, we never learn the origin of the spheres themselves.  Namely, we never learn if the sphere orbs were man-made devices, or if they were extra-terrestrial or spiritual in nature.  Now, if there are going to be sequels that answer these questions, then this complaint of mine goes out the window.

If you're looking for a book that will draw you in and leave you reading for more, and you don't mind certain questions about the story not being answered, then Found is the book for you.

Final Grade:  B