by Jessica Warman
Publisher: Walker & Company
Release Date: Aug 2, 2011
Source: ARC sent by publisher
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Summary from goodreads.com:
Elizabeth Valchar--pretty, popular, and rich--wakes up the morning after her eighteenth birthday on the yacht where she'd been celebrating with her closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, she finds her own drowned body is hitting the side of the boat. Liz is dead.
She has no memory of what happened to her, and can only observe in horror the fallout of her death. She's also soon joined by Alex Berg, a quiet boy from her high school who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The two keep each other company, floating in and out of memories and trying to piece together the details of what happened to each of them.
In her regular life, Liz was a runner. It wasn't abnormal for her to run 8-10 miles per day. But as memories from closer to her death begin to surface, Liz finds that she'd been running much more than normal, and that she'd all but stopped eating. Liz's mother, who died when Liz was nine, had battled with anorexia as well, and those around her worried Liz was following in her mother's footsteps. But something more sinister was consuming Liz from the inside out. . . .
From critically acclaimed author Jessica Warman comes a shocking mystery, a heartbreaking character study, and ultimately a hopeful tale of redemption, love, and letting go.
My Review:
This book is definitely disturbing, but it's also one of the only mysteries that has held my attention up the very end.
I wanted to read this story way past my bedtime, it was such a page-turner. It really wasn't until there were only 100 pages left that realization started to hit and I was able to put most of the pieces together.
Sometimes the drug use got a little old. The book had a wishy-washy stance on whether drugs are bad or just something the cool kids do. It was was also hard to read about all of Liz's parents' marital problems. It's sad to see a teenager having to worry about such an adult drama.
I really don't want to go into a lot of detail in my review because I want anyone who reads it to be able to uncover all of the subtle hints gradually like i did.
I always think it's interesting to see that even the "popular" kids at school have many layers and facets to their personalities, with many reasons that they act the way they do. The author did a great job of showing all the layers of Liz's life. She might not have been so likable at first glance, until learning about her life throughout the book.
Main Characters: 4/5
Supporting Characters: 4/5
Setting: 4/5
Romance: 3/5
Uniqueness: 5/5
Cover: 3/5 (I feel like her face is going to pop up and be really scary!)
Writing: 4/5
Bottom Line: A dark, tragic look at what can lie beneath the surface.