Just finished Reconstructing Amelia. WOW! Excellent writing style from this author and from what I understand, this is also her debut novel. I'm not normally a huge mystery fan, but this book was very well done!
In this book we meet Kate, who gets a phone call at work that she needs to pick up her daughter, fifteen year old Amelia from school. She has been suspended effective immediately, but when she gets there, she discovers there are emergency crews all around Amelia's school. She soon learns that Amelia has jumped from the roof of her school. Police tell her it was suicide after being caught cheating on a paper. Kate can't believe this, since her daughter was an honor roll student who did very well in the particular subject that she was cheating in. Then Kate gets a text from a blocked number saying that Amelia didn't jump.
In the book, we are reading from Amelia's point of view, Kate's point of view, and there was also Amelia's Facebook enteries, emails, and notes. We follow Kate, as she talks to the various people in Amelia's life, some good, and some not so good. Kate learns that her daughter was in a secret club called the Magpies. The Magpies run their club through intimidation, hazing, and peer pressure and it is not easy to leave once you are in there. She learns that her daughter was living a completely different life then she thought. When we get to read from Amelia's point of view (it switches back and forth), we get to see more in depth about why Amelia made some of the choices she made, the Magpies, and we get to read about Amelia's first love and about her friendships. I won't ruin the end, because that's not how I roll, but it was an ending that did surprise me a little bit, but not too much.
The only things that I really did not like about this book were:
1. Amelia's point of view- I didn't feel like I was in the head of a fifteen year old girl. Her thoughts just seemed very adult to me. I understand that there are fifteen year old that are like little adults though, so it didn't bother me too much.
2. I can't go into detail, but there were some things in the book that weren't very believable to me. Especially things or decisions that faculty and administrators did that seemed to have no consequences. And no, I'm not talking about any affairs with students.
I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars, even with the things I didn't like. The author did an excellent job of keeping me hooked! I was up until 2:30am reading and then immediately picked up where I left up the next morning. Great story, great characters! Will definitely read Ms. McCreight's next book. :)
Next book I'll be reading: The Interestings
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