Review: Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone - Kat Rosenfield

Where I got it: Library
Rating: 5 stars  

Cover Rating: 5 stars (O_O perfect!)
Genre: Young Adult

Publication Date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile

Page Count: 277 p.

Buy it: Book Depository / Amazon
Add it: Goodreads

On a night where everything started to change for Becca, a dead body changed her town. The unknown corpse of a girl on the side of the road, left her small town fumbling. The cops weren't sure what to do with a murder case, and no one knew how this could have happened in this town. Everyone knew one thing though: the person who did this couldn't have been from around here. Becca wants to escape this town at the end of the summer, but the murder has left her rattled. Her plans seem less sure and she finds herself curiously drawn in to the gossip surrounding the mysterious girl. Amelia Anne Richardson was on her way to her big new life, until something happened that left her stuck in a small town she never knew.

Amazing. Can that be the end of my review? I mean, what else is there to say. This book was just as good as I had hoped it would be and that cover is still FANTASTIC. Kat Rosenfield crafted a novel that kept you guessing as you floated through the beautiful writing. I loved the format of this novel too. You have Becca's perspective in Bridgeton after the murder and then Amelia's perspective in the time leading up to her demise. It was very interesting having Becca's side of the story, since she didn't have any real connection to Amelia. Usually in murder mysteries the people telling the story have some sort of tie to the victim, or at the very least are the ones in charge of investigating. It was refreshing to get a new take on murder aftermath.

The writing was completely beautiful and gripping. I never wanted to stop reading. Each chapter makes you a bit more feverish;  you creep to the edge of your seat inch by inch. This made it so that there was never a great place to stop, because it felt like the next page would tell you all the book's secrets.

Becca had other things going on and since she didn't know the murder victim, so those other things took up a lot of her brain space. She was curious about the murder, but also nervous that, like the corpse, she may never actually escape Bridgeton. It was interesting to see Becca going about her life fairly normally, but with the nagging of wanting to know who murdered Amelia. The other characters weren't quite as developed, but we knew as much about them as Becca did. I liked that the story went into the hard times that James had gone through. It made me more sympathetic towards him, it made him into a guy with feelings instead of just some jerk. Every emotion that the characters had in this novel made sense and I really liked that. At first you might think, well, why to the summer people not care much for the locals, but then you read a few more chapters and you find out. It was really great.

Definitely, definitely pick this book up soon. There is no way you will regret it. This will certainly be on my Top Books of 2012 list. So go read it now.

First Line:
"The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky."

Favorite Line:
"The perfect circle of dark, still water; the overhanging trees rising gracefully around it; the cool, gray boulders worn smooth by time and weather—Brendan saw all of this and gasped at its beauty."