Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight | Book Review

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight 
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Reading Group Rating: Young Adult

Personal Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Given Summary: Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.

Kate can't believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who's never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate's faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead. 

Seemingly unable to cope with what she'd done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school's roof in an act of "spontaneous" suicide. At least that's the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:  

She didn't jump.

Sifting through Amelia's emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall's roof that day-and why she died.

Told in alternating voices, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, of love and betrayal, of trusted friends and vicious bullies. It's about how well a parent ever really knows a child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.


Cover: A girl, presumably Amelia, looking at the New York skyline from the edge of the woods.  It seems to be a gloomy day, very foggy.  The colors are all very dark except for the girl's bright red shirt.

Summary: (Just want to say in advance that I'm writing this summary a while after actually reading this book, so it probably won't be that detailed.  I'm sorry.  It's my own fault.)
The chapters in this book switch from Amelia's and what happened leading up to her death and Kate's and what happened after Amelia's death.
Amelia Baron dies from falling off of the roof of her high school, but did she fall?  Did she jump?  Was she pushed?  Her mother, Kate, is working to figure that out.  However along the way Kate finds out a lot more about Amelia, and herself, than she would have originally liked.  She learns that Amelia was apart of a school group and that she posted inappropriate pictures of herself online because of it.  She also learns that Amelia's father is not her co-worker she had a fling with, but her boss!  And that her boss also had another illegitimate daughter, who was the one to invite Amelia into the group at school.  The most important thing she finds out was the answer to what she was wondering all along: What happened on the roof of the school?  Amelia's best friend pushed her.  The girls were having an argument and she didn't think Amelia would go over the edge of the building, but yes, Amelia's friend killed her.  

My Review: I enjoyed the twists and turns this novel took you on.  It goes with the whole thing about eavesdroppers and how they never hearing hearing anything good about themselves.  Whenever you go digging for some form of information you're going to find more than you bargained for.  You're probably going to discover some things about yourself, maybe some good, maybe some bad.  Kate finds out loads of stuff she never even knew needed to be uncovered.  This novel keeps you guessing.  It was different from other books I typically read, but I very much enjoyed it.  It's one of those books that holds messages everyone can benefit from.  It shows the mind of a teenager and the mind of her mother.  How they're different and how they're the same.  I think it would benefit everyone to read this book, or one like it.

Smile!  I'll talk to you soon!xxx
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