There are many books I've read in my youth that mean something completely different to me today. Whisper of Death's actual meanings changed completely because I never fully understood some of its plot points - I first read it in middle school and then a few times in high school. I always remembered it being one of my favourite Pike books, and maybe that was because it doesn't have a neat, happy ending.

However, there's an overarching storyline about the main character, Roxanne, getting an abortion. And to be sure, the story never gets preachy in any respect, but this is a storyline which had a larger context that I had no clue about in middle school. And so, it almost became more scary when I realized all the implications this time. The story's plot is also very Twilight Zone in the fact that five teenagers wake up to a town with nobody in it - and there's a reason why. Again, like Pike's other young adult books, there's a lot more going on in the heads of these characters, be it Sita's spirituality in The Last Vampire or Roxanne's mystification with the stars and Mars, in this book. Interestingly, Roxanne sees a movie called Season of Passage, which ended up being the title of an adult Pike book years later - about aliens from Mars.

I'm still enjoying my Pike retrospect at twenty-five; it's fun to connect to my younger self.