The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

Sym is not your average teenage girl. She is obsessed with the Antarctic and the brave, romantic figure of Captain Oates from Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. In fact, Oates is the secret confidant to whom she spills all her hopes and fears.
But Sym's uncle Victor is even more obsessed--and when he takes her on a dream trip into the bleak Antarctic wilderness, it turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival that will challenge everything she knows and loves.
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Starting this book was more of a challenge than you'd guess from the amazing summary on the back. When I first picked this book up, I thought it'd be an action-packed story with an easy ending. But the first 100 pages were, in my opinion, slightly wasted on the preparation for their journey to the South Pole. It took me a good week to finish, mostly because I was bored with the first half. Then, wham! Suddenly this wasn't the slow, building suspenseful book I had been reading a few minutes before. After I realized what was actually going on and where the whole story was going, I was struggling for my life right along beside Sym and her possessed Uncle Victor. I began to love Titus Oates just as much as Sym did, and I have to admit I wish I had an imaginary, handsome soul mate that died bravely in the Antarctic a hundred years ago. The ending didn't quite surprise me, but it was fulfilling nonetheless.
I give it 4/5, and recommend it to anyone who's patient enough to get through 150 pages of prefacing a great story.