In a small town, murder is always more than a paragraph in the local paper.

"It is, after all, these small-town tragedies that truly bring a community closer together. That separate the outsiders from the ones who belong. That keep the gates closed, and the doors locked, and the evil of the wider world safely outside.

We don't trust you if we don't know you, and sometimes, we don't trust you if we do. We band together; we circle the wagons; we peer out of our shuttered windows with weapons in hand and loved ones at our side.

When the blinds are drawn and the stakes are high, only the lucky few are allowed to come in."

  ~~~~~  

I just finished a great YA book, Amelia Anne Is Dead And Gone by Kat Rosenfield. It's beautifully written and completely mesmerizing. The Kirkus review called the book "utterly compelling".


I couldn't put it down; it was an absolutely brutal page-turner!


It's unlike any murder mystery I've ever read. The chapters are intercut between Amelia Anne Richardson's life and Rebecca, the town of Bridgeton's high school salutatorian.


However, there is violence and sex and bad language... still, it was all perfectly placed and necessary... yet, maybe you should be 13 or 14 years old to read it... or have your parent read it first and see what they think.


Chapter 12 was so lyrical and atmospheric and evocative and positively lovely:

"The day that Brendan Brooks died was the hottest in anyone's memory, so hot that cats lay down in the shade and panted, elderly women fainted under the weight of their support hose, and the newly paved parking lot behind the grocery bubbled and churned and turned into a viscous black pudding. The sun, silvery-bright and hot, so hot, blazed arrogantly down from a blanched and cloudless sky. It baked small bits of gravel into the soft asphalt roads, it melted popsicles off their sticks and over the grubby hands of porch-sitting toddlers, and it pounded relentlessly against the supple skin of the local kids who gathered at the south shore bridge to cool off."

If you want to see what gorgeous writing looks like, sounds like, feels like... you need to read Amelia Anne Is Dead And Gone.


* with your parents permission, of course.