Elizabeth Valchar-pretty, popular, and perfect-wakes up the morning after her eighteenth birthday party on her family's yacht, where she'd been celebrating with her six closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, what she finds will change everything she thought she knew about her life, her friends, and everything in between. As Liz begins to unravel the circumstances surrounding her birthday night, she will find that no one around her, least of all Liz herself, was perfect-or innocent. Critically acclaimed author Jessica Warman brings readers along on a roller-coaster ride of a mystery, one that is also a heartbreaking character study, a touching romance, and ultimately a hopeful tale of redemption, love, and letting go.
MY THOUGHTS
For some reason, I find books about the afterlife interesting. This book isn't quite about the afterlife, but it has been sitting in the TBR pile for a long time and I'm surprised that I hadn't picked it up until now.
The book focuses on Elizabeth. On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Elizabeth wakes to find that she's dead, her body fallen over the side of the yacht. She doesn't remember how she died or even the last few months of her life. Her death seems like an accident, but Elizabeth isn't sure. With the help of another ghost, Alex, Elizabeth tries to remember her life up until her death.
Elizabeth was a hard character to understand at first. She's pretty, popular, and rich. Her personality sometimes came out bratty and I found her a bit frustrating. As the story continued, I grew to understand Elizabeth's character and what exactly was going on in her mind leading up to her death.
This book is interesting because even though it has paranormal elements, such as having someone walk on earth after their death and entering their memories, this book was also a mystery. The mystery was also surprising for the most part. There were a few elements I guessed ahead of time, even though I wished they weren't true, but there was also enough to keep me guessing.
This book gets very dark and emotional. This was to be expected since it deals with death, but it also dealt with other tough subjects such as guilt, blackmail, mental health, etc. It was very hard reading this book as it got closer to the end because even though Elizabeth got on my nerves at first when I started to understand what she went through, I had to realize that no matter what, Elizabeth is dead and did not get a happy end in life. Alex didn't get a happy end in life either, but gosh, I can't even articulate how much change he went through.
IN CONCLUSION
I thought this was an interesting read. I'm not sure what prevented me from giving this book 4 stars. While I thought this was a very interesting, albeit dark, read, I think part of my misgivings with Elizabeth in the beginning, as well as parts of the end (which felt off), affected my rating. I do think that this book is worth a read. I have not read any other books by Warman, but I may need to read more from this author in the future.
I hereby give this book
3.5 Stars
Meaning: I liked it, but it wasn't quite amazing.
I have yet to read a book by Warman, but I have heard mixed things. I may or may not check this one out now. I hadn't really heard much about it to begin with before this review. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteKrystianna @ Downright Dystopian