Review: The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

Author: April Henry
Pages: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Read: June 12-14, 2013
Source: ARC from publisher for review

Description from Goodreads:
“Take her out back and finish her off.”

She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she is, or why. All she knows when she comes to in a ransacked cabin is that there are two men arguing over whether or not to kill her.

And that she must run.

In her riveting style, April Henry crafts a nail-biting thriller involving murder, identity theft, and biological warfare. Follow Cady and Ty (her accidental savior turned companion), as they race against the clock to stay alive.

First Sentence: "I wake up."

Review:

This review is going to be uncharacteristically short for me, but the book itself is pretty short, so I suppose that's fitting. Since this is going to be one of those 3 star reviews that sort of reads like I didn't like the book, let me say this up front: I did like The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die. I'm not generally a big fan of thrillers, but I previously quite enjoyed Henry's Girl, Stolen, so I hoped that I would like this one just as much. Still, TGWWSTD was a fun, quick read overall.

In general, I would say that April Henry accomplishes what she set out to do in this book. TGWWSTD entertains. The plot moves along at a fast pace, and it's certainly never boring. The reader can't help but be curious and the pages flip by quickly. TGWWWSTD serves as the literary equivalent of a fairly mindless action movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The techniques Henry uses to accomplish this are quite standard thriller fare, which is why my enjoyment of this one boils down purely to the sheer entertainment factor. The main character has amnesia for much of the book, waking up in a cabin as two men prepare to kill her. Sure, amnesia happens, but it's over-employed in such action plots to up the danger level, since the MC doesn't have any idea where to go or who to trust.

Henry's writing consists of simple sentences and fragments. This style does create a sense of rushing headlong through the story. Thriller authors employ this method to create a feeling of urgency. While I do think it does work, I just generally prefer complex, more ornate writing. The combination of the writing, short chapters, and fast pace will likely make this an excellent choice for reluctant readers.

Most every chapter ends on a mini-cliffhanger, immediately resolved on the next page. Yet again, this technique does keep the reader moving through the novel at a fast clip. It's designed to make TGWWSTD a one sitting read, because you have to keep going to answer the lingering question from the last chapter. Effective, but trite.

While not thoroughly fleshed out, Henry's characters are sufficiently realistic for her purposes. Cady and Ty are likable enough that the reader does want them to win out over the bad guys. The skills that Cady possesses seem a bit convenient, though some are explained, like her ability to fight. What really feels unlikely is that Cady met Ty, a boy just this side of destitution, who is willing to miss class, endangering his dream of being an EMT, and work, risking putting him on the streets, to help save her from men with guns. Sure, he's nice, but, really, who's going to do that? I can see helping her when they first meet, but he's with her to the end, and I just don't see that. He also just happens to have the right amount of cash saved up so they can do what they need to do.

The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die runs just 213 pages. With short chapters and a fast pace, it's an excellent choice when you want something you can read quickly for sheer entertainment value. Ultimately, though, it's not particularly memorable and I won't be revisiting it.

Rating: 3/5

Favorite Quote: Didn't have one

Review: Pretty Girl-13

Pretty Girl-13

Author: Liz Coley
Pages: 352
Publisher: Katherine Tegen
Publication Date:March 19, 2013
Source: For review from YA Books Central

Description from Goodreads:
Reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case, Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing and powerful psychological mystery about a girl who must piece together the story of her kidnapping and captivity.

Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do-people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

Liz Coley's alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing-and ultimately empowering-page-turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love.

First Sentence: "You had forgotten how early the sun rises on summer campouts—and how loud the birds sing in the morning."

Review:

Holy shit. I knew from the cover that this book would be creepy, but I was not emotionally prepared for this experience. Pretty Girl-13 is one of those books that I'm going to remember for a while, not something that will quickly dissipate from my limited memory banks for story lines. Liz Coley's debut will no doubt shock and offend readers, one of those reads that will be deemed inappropriate for any but the most mature teens, due to the many triggers, most especially rape. If you can handle it, though, Pretty Girl-13 is a riveting tale of recovery from intense psychological and physical trauma.

If you put me in front of a horror movie, I collapse into a shrieking ball of fear. Even though I know what's going to happen, I can't handle it one bit. Horror books, though, really don't scare me. Pretty Girl-13 managed it, however. The horror of Coley's novel is not one of outright violence or things jumping out at you; it's one of the mind. This book messes with your head, makes you imagine situations you've never considered. Angie suddenly appears after three years missing. She has no memory of that period, none at all. That is the most terrifying thing for me: all that time she can't remember, the idea that anything at all could have happened to her and she wouldn't know.

Throughout Pretty Girl-13, I was on the edge of my seat, filled with tension as Angie's story unravels. At no point did my interest wane or did I find the book boring. The revelations come fast and thick, keeping the reader at rapt attention. This is one of those books that I got so into, I disappeared at times, sucked completely into the book, flipping pages without conscious effort.

A couple of the secondary characters in Pretty Girl-13 really shine, and I want to give them a shout out, because the supporting cast generally doesn't get enough love. Kate, Angie's friend, is marvelous. She's totally at one with herself, accepting of her role as a social pariah and determined to make the best of it. Then there are the twins, Ali and Abraim, who date Kate and Angie. Oh my goodness, but they are so cute. Abraim is such a non-standard YA hero in pretty much every way, and I am so thrilled about the way their little romance is handled, though it is probably less than five percent of the story.

Angie herself is a bit trickier. For reasons that will become obvious when you read the book, or if you read the blurb, which I think is a bit spoilery, Angie's character is a bit inconsistent. The narrative style of Pretty Girl-13 does not help with connection to Angie's character. Coley uses third person, which is naturally distancing, and I felt it especially so here. On the other hand, the italicized sections were a well done device. Though I pity Angie and want the best for her, I never got a solid handle on her character, which is understandable, but kept me from engaging that last little bit.

I also feel like some aspects were oversimplified or made more dramatic for plot purposes. Though I can't speak about these directly because I don't want to spoil the story for you, I can say that Angie's recovery takes place to quickly. Her psychologist suggests that full recovery will take years and she's pretty close by the end of a few months. That seems highly unlikely to me, even given some of the extraneous circumstances.

Pretty Girl-13 is a knuckle-biting psychological thriller. I recommend it for mature readers who want a novel that pushes the boundaries of what YA novels can discuss. Readers who prefer lighter fare will want to look elsewhere. This one's intense. Like camping.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote:

"'You don't mince words, do you?' Angie said, a small piece of her innocence in tatters. She didn't want to give him up. He was a link, a bridge across the lost time.
     'I don't have to,' Kate replied. 'I'm already a leper. Gives me the freedom to be honest.'"

Review: Girl, Stolen

Girl, Stolen

Author: April Henry
Pages: 220
Publisher: Walker Books
Source: Own

Description from Goodreads:
Sixteen-year-old Cheyenne Wilder is sleeping in the back of a car while her mom fills her prescription for antibiotics. Before Cheyenne realizes what's happening, their car is being stolen. Griffin hadn't meant to kidnap Cheyenne, but once his dad finds out that Cheyenne's father is the president of a powerful corporation, everything changes--now there's a reason to keep her. How will Cheyenne survive this nightmare? Because she's not only sick with pneumonia--she's also blind.

First Sentence: "Cheyenne heard the car door open."

Review:

In reading Girl, Stolen, I was reminded of two bits of pop culture: Excess Baggage and Wait Until Dark. The first film, a pretty terrible movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro, tells the story of a poor little rich girl who, in an effort to get daddy's attention, fakes a kidnapping by locking herself in a car's trunk, only to have that car actually stolen. Then she cooks up a romance and a scheme with her accidental captor. Wait Until Dark, quite differently focuses on a blind woman, played by Audrey Hepburn who some thugs suspect of having a doll stuffed with drugs. She has to try to escape this situation with her life. Put these two together and you've sort of got Girl, Stolen.

Of course, comparing a book to other stories really limits it, so I want to stress that there's more going on here; in making these comparisons, I do not intend to imply that Henry's story is entirely derivative by any means. Henry did a marvelous job telling this story, keeping everything suspenseful and scary, but not venturing into melodramatic territory in the slightest. She does not try to make anything more difficult than it already is for the sake of extra drama.

So much YA that I've read, usually in the paranormal genre, centers on a heroine, gifted with supernatural powers that enable her to do absolutely anything, yet she still ends up relying on other people to save her. Your powers or your weaknesses are only what you allow them to be. Cheyenne has been blind since an accident three years ago damaged her brain, leaving her with functioning eyes but a mind unable to read the messages. Now almost entirely blind, she relies on her cane or her seeing eye dog, Phantom.

On the day in question, Cheyenne's step-mom convinced Cheyenne the dog should stay home, since they were not going very far. While her step-mother went into the pharmacy to get the antibiotics to treat Cheyenne's pneumonia, Cheyenne rested in the backseat. Then the car got stolen. Griffin had no idea she was in the car, but, once he got home to his piece of shit father, she becomes even more useful to them than the jacked Escalade. Cheyenne's father runs Nike corporation, and she can be ransomed for a lot of money.

In this situation, I cannot imagine I would be capable of anything other than some snarky comebacks and some seriously menacing death glares. Cheyenne, sick with pneumonia, running a fever, tiny, and blind never stops planning escapes. She is such an incredibly powerful character, able to make the best of any situation, and to use her strengths to best advantage. Where some heroines have endless amounts of power and don't use it, Cheyenne makes the most out of everything she has. I respect her so much, and Henry for writing a heroine with a disability and not making her pitiable, but a figure of strength.

Girl, Stolen weighs in at only 220 pages, but packs an emotional punch. Dark, scary, and investigating whether Griffin is a redeemable figure, I was sucked into this novel and not let go until I finished the last page. If you're tired of young adult fiction focused on romance and whiny heroines, Girl, Stolen is the perfect break.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: "What she was left with was a blurred sliver of color and shapes that usually was more distracting than helpful. Now, if she wanted to see anything at all, she had to turn her head away from it. It seemed like a metaphor, but Cheyenne didn't know for what."

Review: The Calling

The Calling
Luther, Book 1

Author: Neil Cross
Pages: 324
Publisher: Touchstone
Source: Publisher for review

Description from Goodreads:
A brilliant crime novel and prequel to the acclaimed BBC series by the show’s creator and sole writer Meet Detective Chief Inspector John Luther. He’s a murder detective with an extraordinary case-clearance rate. He’s obsessive, instinctive, and intense. Nobody who ever stood at his side has a bad word to say about him. And yet there are rumors that Luther is bad—not corrupt, not on the take, but tormented. After years of chasing the most depraved criminals in London’s gritty underworld, he seethes with a hidden fury that at times he can barely control. Sometimes it sends him to the brink of madness, making him do things any other detective wouldn’t and shouldn’t do.

Luther: The Calling, the first in a new series of novels featuring DCI John Luther, takes us into Luther’s past and into his mind. It is the story of the serial killer case that tore his personal and professional relationships apart and propelled him over the precipice—beyond fury, beyond vengeance, all the way to the other side of the law. Is Luther a force for good or a man hell-bent on self-destruction? Edgar Award–winning writer Neil Cross has created one of the most compelling characters in modern crime fiction. Luther: The Calling is a compulsively readable novel by the writer hailed by The Guardian as “Britain’s own Stephen King.”

First Sentence: "John Luther, a big man with a big walk, crosses the hospital car park, glistening with night rain."

Review:
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably already know that mysteries just aren't really my thing. They can be good, but they're all so similar in their plot arc, and I just don't feel compelled to read many. As such, I usually reject review requests for mysteries. However, I made an exception for this one, because it's based on a BBC series, one I haven't seen actually, but still! The allure of British programming is irresistable to me!

The Calling is a prequel to the the British Series, which is supposedly wonderful. Though I know nothing about it, I can see this book setting up Luther as he must be in the show. His married life falls apart, so that he can be the typical single, gruff detective and free, presumably, for hookups and romantic entanglements later on in the show. Happy husbands are not generally assumed to make compelling television. In The Calling, he also steps outside the bounds of what is allowable for police work, possibly for the first time, another thing that I assume sets up the plot of the show.

My favorite aspects of the novel, though, were those that do not fit into the detective stereotype. While Luther's marriage breaks up in the typical way, through her frustration over his workaholic nature, he cares more than most of the hard-boiled detective types. John Luther is a romantic; he loves his wife wholly and completely, and neglects her during cases, because he simply cannot rest (literally) until the case is solved. His need to resolve cases seems almost pathological. On top of his deep love and respect for his wife, Luther also loves to read and is a rather quiet, nerdy guy outside of the office.

Of course, when he's working, Luther is, without a doubt, a freaking badass that you really do not want to be messing with. He will stop at nothing to catch the bad guy and save a life. I had the most trouble with these aspects because I really cannot imagine him getting away with most of the things that he does. Of course, vigilante justice is much more entertaining than the way 'justice' would really work, with trials and evil men going free, but it just didn't seem believable to me at times.

This book is pretty graphic, so the faint of heart, those who like their mysteries to be of the cozy variety, should pass this one buy with a quickness. Also, even if you like graphic violence in your books, I want to warn that there are brutal scenes of animal violence (even worse than Origin) and crimes perpetrated against children. If you have young children, you might not want to read this, unless you're really good at not imagining fictional circumstances happening to your own kids.

All in all, The Calling did follow along with pretty standard mystery tropes, but I did enjoy it a bit more than usual. If you like dark, gritty mysteries, this should please you.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote:

"She says, 'You're home.'
   He ignores the redundancy. It's just one of those things people say to each other. Most words people say to each other don't mean what they seem to. Spoken words carry they're real meaning like rats carry infected fleas."

Fix You - Coldplay

Blue Monday
Frieda Klein, Book 1

Author: Nicci French
Pages: 322
Review Copy Acquired from: Penguin

Brief Summary:
Frieda Klein is a therapist, who helps people come to terms with their own lives and function better. She has her own problems, though, like a crippling fear of letting anybody in. This includes her boyfriend, Sandy. She tries to avoid getting too caught up in anything. Forcing her out of her usual routine is a new patient, Alan, who's dreams about a child strike a chord with her. Could he be the one who has taken the missing boy that all the papers are talking about? Frieda quickly becomes caught up in the investigation of an incredibly complicated crime.

Review:
As I've mentioned before, I'm not a big mystery reader. I enjoy them, but they tend a bit too much to the formulaic for me, although I realize the irony given how much time I spend reading YA paranormal novels. Also, being a character-driven reader, I generally have trouble relating to the hard-boiled detective types.

That said, I really enjoyed reading this, perhaps even loved it. I have always been fascinated by the minds of criminals, along with everyone else apparently, given the popularity of shows like Criminal Minds. Blue Monday focuses on the kidnapping of young children, a girl and 20 years later a boy. The reader gets a third person view into the mind of every character, which really worked for this novel.

What I definitely loved was that the focus of the book, and the series, is Frieda. She is awesome and a character I can totally relate to, even in her desire to push people away. She is really why I so much enjoyed reading this book, because she really has a strength as a character. Plus, I liked that the mystery was from the perspective of a psychologist rather than a detective, which gave a different filter to the story.

I know I will be reading more Nicci French (Nicci Gerrard + Sean French) novels in the future, especially the next Frieda Klein book. So glad there's more!

Rating: 4/5

P.S. I really want you to know that this cover looks so much prettier in person, because it's all shiny.

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you"

Until It Sleeps - Metallica

The Dispatcher

Author: Ryan David Jahn
Pages: 351
Review Copy Acquired from: Penguin

Brief Summary:
Ian Hunt works as a police dispatcher in middle-of-nowhere Texas. Most of the calls are bogus, and he spends a lot of time playing solitaire on the computer. One day, though, he gets a call from his daughter Maggie, who has been missing since she was kidnapped seven years before. He now knows that his daughter is still alive, but, by the time the cops get to the pay phone she called from, she has been recaptured. What will a father do to get his daughter back?

Review:
On first look, and perhaps the next several looks as well, The Dispatcher is a gritty story of revenge, of vigilante justice. It reads somewhat like an episode of CSI, Law and Order or Criminal Minds, if those were told from the perspective of a third person narrator, so that the audience knows what every party is thinking. Violence, action, and horrible people abound.

More than that, though, this book is a study in psychology and human nature. Jahn considers what humans are capable of doing when they feel their backs are to the wall. He also plumbs the emotion of love and what horrors can come out of it. None of the characters in this book come out of it without blood on their hands, whether literally or figuratively, but all of them, one could argue, and I do, are in some way motivated by love, and not love for themselves, but for someone else.

The opening sequence is definitely an attention grabber. It really made me think. I do not have kids, and have no interest in having any, but as I reader I try to put myself in the place of the characters as much as I am able to. Ian's love for his daughter is evident in the way he never gave up hoping she might be alive, despite the incredibly low and discouraging odds for the survival of abducted children. I wonder, though, whether it would be more painful to find out that your daughter had been dead all that time or that she was alive. Can you imagine the guilt you would feel that your daughter had been nearby all that time and you had given up the search and left her to whatever awful ministrations the kidnapper has been putting her through all of these years?

Incredibly tragic, too, is the character of Maggie Hunt. Even if she is rescued, how much hope is there for her now, really? She is 14, but having been kidnapped since she was 7, her mental development is stalled. Her only companion for years has been a grisly figment of her imagination. What capacity will she have for trust, for love?

If you enjoy seriously dark stories of murder and people pushed to their limits, Jahn's book may be for you. Be prepared, though, for an open ending. These always drive me crazy because I so much want to know!

Rating: 3/5

"So tear me open but beware
There's things inside without a care
And the dirt still stains me
So wash me 'till I'm clean

I'll tear me open make you gone
No longer will you hurt anyone
And the hate still shames me
So hold me
until it sleeps"

Not While I'm Around from Sweeney Todd

The Winters in Bloom

Author: Lisa Tucker
Pages: 271
ARC Acquired from: Simon & Schuster via NetGalley

Brief Summary:
Kyra and David Winter are seriously overprotective parents. They took their son Michael out of public school for fear that bullies might pick on him, even though nothing bad had actually happened; instead, they home school him. Every bit of his life has been carefully considered and child-proofed. Both Kyra and David have dark pasts that lead them to be so afraid of losing their child. Not only that, but Michael nearly died of meningitis when he was a baby. Their restrictions are so tight that it was astounding that they let him play out in the yard by himself. During this brief period of time, Michael is taken by a woman who says she knows his family. Will the Winters survive this latest catastrophe?

Review:
When I started reading my e-galley of The Winters in Bloom, I noticed first the page at the beginning where the publisher was talking about how much she loved this book and how it was the best one of the year. Her praise was so high that I kind of rolled my eyes, thinking that she loves it because it will make her money. I am happy to report that the book really was that good. From the absolutely incredible first chapter, I was totally involved in the story.

My one previous experience with Lisa Tucker proved disappointing (The Song Reader), perhaps because my expectations were really high. I own a couple of her other books, but haven't gotten to them yet. I am now super glad that I have them.

So yeah, I mentioned how mindblowing the first chapter was. The book opens from Michael's point of view (although in third person) and you can see how much he has been affected by his parent's worries. Young as he is, he has already inherited their fear of everything, as evidenced in the first line: "He was the only child in a house full of doubt." Five years old and he looks around thinking about the many ways he could get injured. This is what he was doing in his time in the backyard by himself when the nice lady came and asked him if he wanted to go on a ride. Wow. Just wow.

While the rest of the story was not as dramatic and intense as this one, the story definitely maintained its beautiful simplicity. I loved finding out what had happened to the various characters to make them into who they now were. There are a lot of hints as you go along, allowing you to make your own suppositions (I was right about David/Courtney, but wrong about Kyra).

If you like stories of family drama and broken people, this is one that is not to be missed. What a completely beautiful, depressing, uplifting story!

"Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around.
Nothing's gonna harm you, no sir, not while I'm around."

Real World - The All-American Rejects

Wither
The Chemical Garden Trilogy, Book 1

Author: Lauren DeStefano
Pages: 358
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Brief Summary:
Rhine Ellery and her twin brother Rowan have been alone since their parents died. They work together to earn enough money to survive and to defend their house from orphans and Gatherers (men who collect young women to sell). Advances in science made it possible to make perfect babies, which was great. Until the generation after that engineered one all started dying. Boys live to 25 and girls only to 20. This is how things are in the United States, the only country left; all that remains besides the U.S. are sporadic islands.

When 16 year old Rhine is taken by a Gatherer and sold to be the wife of a House Governer. She is one of three new wives brought in to comfort him as his first wife succumbs to the virus that kills off all girls of a certain age. Rhine wants nothing more than to escape this place and find her twin brother again, but that certainly will not be easy.

Review:
Wither was really good but also incredibly frustrating. I literally yelled at the book on several occasions. My irritation at the book and Rhine's decisions are an indication of quality in this case. Were the book more comfortable, it would not be doing the subject matter justice. There are serious themes being dealt with here: sexuality, gender, ethics and stockholm syndrome top the bill.

The world building was pretty amazing. While DeStefano has no real scientific reason for why the succeeding generation were all dying off a virus at those particular ages, I did not have too much trouble believing such a thing possible. It seems likely that messing with life through genetic engineering could have such horrible and unforeseen consequences. Perhaps most unlikely from my point of view was the precision of the deaths, with all women and men dying at the same ages. And why do men live five years longer?

Even more than this setting, I loved what she built out from this premise. The world she depicts is horrifying because of how possible it seems given a few crucial things gone wrong. I have no difficulty envisioning a society with such a limited life span turning women into reproduction machines. A small step from that is a return to bigamy, so that wealthy men can have a better chance of fathering progeny, and a powerful sex trade. As a woman, this is horrifying, and that is part of what made the book resonate so strongly with me.

This is the first in a trilogy, which I will definitely be super eager to read the next books of. The ending of Wither could easily have been an ending to Rhine's story, if an unclear one (not uncommon in dystopias), but I'm glad that it's not. The ending of this book struck me as a bit too positive and light given the tone of the rest of the novel, but with more books to come it is but a brief respite for our heroine. I can't wait to find out what happens next!

Also, I have to say that this is one of the prettiest books I have seen in a while. The formatting is gorgeous, not to mention the cover. Go out and find a copy to read!

"I woke up on this side. I thought it was a dream
At first we learned to walk then learned to scream"

God of Wine - Third Eye Blind

Vanishing Acts

Author: Jodi Picoult
Genre: realistic fiction
Pages: 418
Publisher: Washington Square Press

Brief Summary:
Delia Hopkins has a fantastic life. Her dad is the greatest: he does magic tricks, makes pancakes and has always been there whenever she needed him. She has two best friends, Eric and Fitz, who have lived near her as far back as she can remember. She and Eric have a beautiful daughter together; Fitz will do anything for her. Although sometimes disheartening, she loves her career as a find and rescue professional and her bloodhound Greta. Her life begins to unravel the day her father gets arrested. For kidnapping. Her. And apparently her name is Bethany. And her mom hasn't been dead for the last 24 years like her dad told her.

Review:
Jodi Picoult is one of the most popular contemporary authors. I have read and enjoyed (to varying degrees) three of her other novels. For one of my classes at Pitt, we read My Sister's Keeper, or were supposed to. I had read the book prior to taking the course and did not reread it. That one was my favorite of the Picoult books I had read. Imagine my surprise when all of my friends hated it. They said the writing was absolutely atrocious.

In my reading of Vanishing Acts, I paid way more attention to the construction of the novel than I ordinarily do on a first time through a book (in which, unless the story is absolutely awful, I focus on the plot and the characters). I still thought the story itself was engaging, but I definitely found weaknesses in the characterization/writing. The main problem is that, if the fonts were not different for each character, I would constantly have been forgetting which character's point of view I was currently reading. They lack a unique voice. And even when they were freaked out about something, they all continued to read as a bit disaffected.

Although changing the font for each different character is neat, I really think you ought to be able to tell which character is 'speaking' without needing that. Or even without a heading. Also, I have to admit that I was annoyed by the similarity between Andrew's (Delia's father) and Eric's (Delia's fiancee) fonts. Is Picoult (or the publisher) trying to suggest that Delia has serious Elektra complex type daddy issues? Or were they just too lazy to find another font that looked entirely different from the others? There are thousands of fonts; how hard can it be?

All three had two things in common, despite their differing plots: a focus on family and a twist at the very end. The twist here was...pretty much nonexistent. The only things that could maybe called twists are Delia's continual rediscoveries of memories and a 'revelation' that was completely unsurprising given the discourse of the previous chapters.

A decent read on an interesting subject, but not an astounding book. Now for some lyrics! (This song was also selected because alcoholism is a huge topic in this book; about half of the characters are, were or were related to alcoholics).

"And there's a memory of a window, looking through I see you.
Searching for something I could never give you.
There's someone who understands you more than I do.
A sadness I can't erase, all the love on your face."