Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield
Friday, September 06, 2013
Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Publication Date: July 5, 2012
Pages: 304
Source: purchased
Buy It: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository
An arresting un-coming-of-age story, from a breathtaking talentAmelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield is one of those dreary small town life blues type story where the main character, Becca, is graduating and can't wait to go off to college and dust her home town off of her heals for good. Then the body of a mysterious girl is found on the roadside and no one seems to know anything about her: who she is, where she came from and who did her in. The reader learns about Amelia Anne in short intervals tucked between the everyday happenings in Becca's summer, and as gossip and news about the mysterious girls death circulates through the tiny town, Becca loses focus on her college bound goals. She doesn't want to be absorbed by the go nowhere lifestyle of where she lives, but she can't seem to care about preparing herself for her college career anymore either. As Becca's life unravels, you find out about what happened to Amelia Anne. The lives of the two girls are supposed to parallel but I really didn't see it. The ending seemed anti-climactic and followed much of the story which really captured the feel and essence of the dead-end lifestyle of the town and its occupants. It felt like the entire story was set either at night or beneath a constantly cloudy sky. It was heavy and oppressive, and the ending didn’t succeed in lightening the mood even though the mystery surrounding Amelia Anne’s death was finally solved.
Becca has always longed to break free from her small, backwater hometown. But the discovery of an unidentified dead girl on the side of a dirt road sends the town--and Becca--into a tailspin. Unable to make sense of the violence of the outside world creeping into her backyard, Becca finds herself retreating inward, paralyzed from moving forward for the first time in her life.
Short chapters detailing the last days of Amelia Anne Richardson's life are intercut with Becca's own summer as the parallel stories of two young women struggling with self-identity and relationships on the edge twist the reader closer and closer to the truth about Amelia's death.--Goodreads
The cover was an excellent choice
for this novel as the sense of death and abandonment is portrayed well in the
depicted dirt crusted knees and blurry bare feet with a dew drenched rose
nestled in the valley between created between the legs. The dark background also adds to the shadowy tale
of death and dead-end lives within this back-water town.
Cover: 4
Characters: 3
Writing Style: 4
Plot: 3
Ending: 3
1 comments
I don't remember hearing of this one. The cover is interesting and it sounds like it goes well with the book. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts. Interesting that the story is always cloaked in darkness in some way.
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