Hello, Jennifer. Do you have strong feelings one way or the other about the use of a loose diary format for a YA novel? I'm working on a story about a pair of Army brats, a boy of 15 and his 12-year-old sister. At the outset the girl has vanished from her on-post school. The boy is the narrator and ultimately will solve the girl's disappearance. Only about half the chapters are written as dated journal entries in which the boy--on the advice of his high school guidance counselor--works through his feelings about the case, and also about his mother's death and his father's remarriage. But like the other chapters (which are all narrated in first person from the boy's POV), they contain plenty of dialogue and character interaction.
Can this semi-diary format be successful, or would I be better off simply using a straight first-person narrative? (Truth be told, I probably went with the diary device for the world's worst reason: I liked the sound of my working title, Diary of a Demonical Freak--"demonical freak" being an anagram for the boy's name, Frankie MacLeod.)
Thank you for any insights you can provide--and for being brave enough to start this thread!