What happened to Cass McBride? by Gail Giles

In the highly cliqued world of high school, David Kirby has broken a simple but critical rule: he was a nobody who asked the most popular girl in school out on a date.  Cass McBride turns him down with what she thinks is a polite brush-off, but then she leaves a note for her best friend asking how low she-- Cass-- would have to go to date a bottom-feeder like David who most people think is gay.  David finds the note, and hangs himself that night.  David's brother Kyle, seeking revenge, takes Cass from her bed while she's sleeping and buries her alive with nothing more than a crude ventilation system and a walkie talkie to communicate with him as he tortures her.  Author Gail Giles begins the story with Kyle already in custody, believing Cass is dead, and gives us several points of view as the narrative unfolds: Kyle, Cass, one of the police officers who tries to discover what happened to Cass McBride. 
The version I read is 211 pages long, but the font is so big that it could've been a 145 page book in standard font size.  But at 211 pages it's a book that breaks the English teacher threshold of "read a book that's at least 200 pages long."  Frankly, that's a good thing if it means more kids will read the book.  Giles probes some depths of father-daughter, mother-son, sibling, and familial relationships that is reminiscent of what Pat Conroy does so well in his best-selling novels.  However, with Conroy it was an overbearing father who must be escaped; in this novel it is a tyrannical mother.  And for Cass McBride, she must escape being buried alive with no hope of alerting anyone to where she is.  The book is suspenseful and very fast paced, and the text isn't burdened with extraneous information.  I read the novel in a couple hours with a lot of interruptions.  This is a novel I've book talked for about five years and has been one of our most-circulated books over that time span.