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.
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.
– Goodreads
First off, that is the longest summary I’ve ever seen from Goodreads. I tried to edit it down as best I could though!
Anyway, I heard about this book on Twitter… there was a hashtag about books you thought should get more attention & this was on it quite a few times – it was even compared to Gone Girl at one point & I LOVE Gone Girl (& anything Gillian Flynn writes) so I decided to give it a go!
To me, this book was perfect. It was like Gossip Girl meets Pretty Little Liars to be quite honest and those are two of my all-time favorite shows ever (and both based on book series). There’s a lot of girl drama and mystery, both from Amelia & her mom’s perspective. I really, really loved it and wish there was more to it.
The world building (even though technically it’s the same world that we currently live in) was amazing. I’ve never been to New York or Brooklyn but I really felt like I was there, going through it all with Amelia. And Amelia? I LOVE her. She’s so relatable and down to earth. She’s definitely not a bad girl, she just gets mixed up in some bad things.
There are a lot of twists & turns in this story, and every time I thought I had it figured out? BOOM. Something new happened & I realized I totally didn’t. The ending and how everything comes together is absolutely brilliant. Kimberly McCreight is definitely being added to my favorite author list & I’m reading Where They Found Her as we speak!
I rated Reconstructing Amelia 5/5 on Goodreads and I highly, highly recommend it.
lifebetweenreads.com 