Reviewed by Jo Rogers, MyShelf.com
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In May, 2000, Dutton Books released one of the most important books of the year, Katie.com, the true story of Katherine Tarbox and the relationship she developed over the internet with a man who called himself Mark.  Her story began when she was thirteen, and was introduced to the Internet by her older sister, Abby.

Katie lived in New Canaan, Connecticut, a place where appearance is everything.  Her parents were divorced, and Katie lived with her mother and the man she had married, David, and her half-sister, Carrie.  Abby, her older sister, and the only member of the family Katie felt she could talk to, was at a private boarding school.   When Katie's best friend, Karen, began dating, and Karen's older brother was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, Karen was busy and had little time for Katie.

Katie felt alone and abandoned.   She also felt like the whole town was judging her on her appearance, and she didn't measure up.  Thus, when Abby left her computer, equipped with America Online, at home, Katie turned to the teen chat rooms for company.  It was in one of those chat rooms that she met Mark.  He told her he was twenty-three and that he lived in Los Angeles.  He was so sympathetic and kind to her, she told him more and more about herself, including where she lived, and even gave him her phone number.  He would call her in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of the family was asleep.  But while she was telling him all about herself and her life, he was telling her little about himself.

Six months passed.  Katie joined the school swim team, and traveled to meets all over the country.  She was busy, but she still found time to talk to Mark.  On one school trip to Italy, she considered terminating her relationship with him.  It was then that she discovered how much she depended on him to make her feel better about herself and her life.  It was Mark that got her through her day-to-day existence.  She felt that her cared about what happened to her, how she felt and thought and what she was like as a person, not how she looked.  In short, Katie had fallen in love with this man on the Internet.

After Christmas, Mark suggested a face-to-face meeting, and began asking Katie to let him fly her somewhere to meet her.  She refused his offers to fly her to Los Angeles for her birthday, and steadfastly refused to let him come to her home.  She had told no one about him, with the exception of Ashley, her friend from the swim team.  When he kept pushing her, Katie finally agreed to meet him at the hotel in Dallas where the swim team was staying while at the meet.  When Katie went to Mark's hotel room, she didn't find twenty-three-year-old Mark, but forty-one-year-old Francis John Kufrovich, a pedophile.

What happened to Katie could happen to anyone, and not just to girls.  There are female predators out there too.  Katherine Tarbox hides nothing from the reader as she describes how she thought and felt, and what led her into a pedophile's trap.  She also describes the pain of the shunning she and her family received when they decided to prosecute Kufrovich.  Katie.com is a book every teenager or parent of a teenager should read; for Katie also tells how to avoid the traps of the dangerous people who lurk in the place many children consider their playground - the Internet.

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