I bought this book at noon today, and finished it tonight at 7PM. Admittedly, I bought it at the airport as I was FOUR HOURS early for my flight and really looking for something that might be a quick and compelling read. Woo, did I choose wisely. The book is told in alternating chapters from the perspective (in the third person) of Kate, a single mother to 15-year-old Amelia, and in the first person from the perspective of Amelia herself. The Kate chapters start with […]
“Because there are 176 definitions for the word loser on urbandictionary.com. Don’t Be a Statistic.”
Of course, Reconstructing Amelia gets compared to Gone Girl on the cover (what hasn’t, at this point?). It definitely will appeal to people who like the twists and turns of Gone Girl, although it’s not as well written and, despite being about a teenager’s death, not nearly as dark, in my opinion. “…[E]ven I know that being a parent is awful ninety-five percent of the time…As far as I can tell, it’s that last five percent that keeps the human race from dying out. Four parts blinding terror, […]
Girls in this book are all named things like Dylan, Zadie and Tempest
Amelia didn’t jump. This is the text message Kate receives after her daughter Amelia allegedly jumps off the school roof. This prompts Kate to look further into Amelia’s death beyond agonizing about what more she could have done as a single parent working a bazillion hours a week as a lawyer. Amelia was a fifteen-year-old star student accused of plagiarizing an English paper, which the police attribute as the motive for suicide. As Kate investigates more, suicide becomes more and more unlikely. The story is […]