Review: Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield

 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.

Ameila Anne Is Dead and Gone is one of my favorite books of 2012, in fact it’s my second favorite contemporary (the other being Lola and the Boy Next Door). The author writes so eloquently and descriptively and I was attached to the book until I finished it. Here’s a paragraph from the novel to show you what I mean (it’s from the ARC, may not be in finished copy):

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 vicious 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 small 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…

I loved how the book was told in two POV’s-Becca ‘s and Amelia’s. It was so interesting to see how they were both alike and different and by reading Amelia’s chapters I think that it made me even more emotional because at the beginning you know Amelia ends up dying but by knowing her character, it makes it all the more tragic. The relationship problems seemed so real and harsh.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book was how Amelia never got justice and the killer won. You should definitely read this book if you like Ellen Hopkins’s books or just beautiful, intense stories in general. 5 Stars!