Release Date: June 11th 2013
Published By: HarperTeen
Pages: 419
Goodreads: Add it to your reading list

Rating: 1 out of 5

Synopsis: The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn’s haunting debut.

On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese’s fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Review: This book certainly seems to have divided audiences, and unfortunately… this one just wasn’t for me. I didn’t finish this book, I feel it’s fair to disclose that upfront. I got 70% of the way through, and couldn’t continue. The storyline started out really interesting and promising and I was 100% gripped for the first 100 pages or so. And then things started to get weird….. and not necessarily “good weird”.

Don’t get me wrong, I am cool with books that jump from now back to the past (or even the future in some cases), but I just didn’t really like how this was done, with no offer of explanation. I found it was written in a manner that was really confusing. I don’t mind reading chapters that are fragmented when the pieces actually do come together in a logical sequence. But I just didn’t feel like I got what I needed from the snippets I was given.

From the blurb on the back of the book, I thought I was getting an entirely different style of novel. And at the start, it was reminiscent of Pretty Girl-13 which I really was enjoying. I was prepared to read a contemporary horror style novel, but one thing that the blurb of this book did NOT explain to me at the time, and I really wish it had - was that this story has a huge paranormal/supernatural style element to it. It was this aspect of the book that turned my contemporary book on to its head and took it into a whole new direction that was both confusing and uninspiring.

Some people have really loved this book, and perhaps if I’d have had the desire to see the end of the book, I might have too. But I just couldn’t push on personally. That being said - like any book I don’t love, I challenge others to try it none-the-less. You might see something in this that I just didn’t. It’s a real shame too, cause no one sets out to pick up a book that they’re not going to like, but that’s sometimes how it happens.

I don’t feel like I can fairly give this book more than 1 star based on the fact that it end up being on my DNF (did not finish) pile. 2 stars would indicate that I thought it was okay, and at the time of reading it, I didn’t think it was okay enough to finish, so that’s why it might seem harsh - but in this case, fair I feel.

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