I cringed when I started reading this book and the main character was a high school senior. I don't do YA anymore because there is too much teenage angst. It goes with the age and I'm beyond that age and then some. Then when a male, high-school English teacher entered the story, I groaned out loud.
That said, I continued reading and liked the book overall. My favorite character was the police chief. He was tough yet caring. He tried not to let the emotion aspect of the case cloud his job of finding the killer. And he did his job well.
There were a lot of components to the story that drew me in and got me to care and sympathize this the characters. I admired how the English teacher loved his wife and tried so hard to reignite their relationship. I couldn't understand his wife's distance at first but I even sympathized with her towards the end.
By the end I really liked this book. The mystery wasn't easy to solve and my guesses as to who the murderer was kept jumping from one to another person and back again. I will watch for future books by Mindy Mejia.
I learned a new technique while reading this book. Each chapter starts with a character's name and a date. If this had been a paper book I would have left a bookmark at the beginning of each chapter so I could flip back and forth to see if what I was reading took place before or after "the defining event." Since I was reading an ebook I couldn't do that so I highlighted the title of each chapter. When I needed to reference what I was reading I just looked at the highlights. It really worked quicker than flipping back and forth in a paper book.
1 comment:
I didn't read YA as a YA because I couldn't handle the teenage angst. lol
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