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Review: Between by Jessica Warman

Between by Jessica Warman
Published by Egmont
Source: Review Copy


Only the good die young. Right? Elizabeth Valchar has it all: friends, money, beauty, a cute boyfriend and assured popularity. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she is found drowned next to her parents' boat. Everyone thinks it was a tragic accident - teens drinking on a boat, a misstep leading to a watery death. But Liz is still here after death, and she doesn't know why. There are gaps in her memory. Her only company Alex, a boy killed by a car a year earlier, Liz sets out to piece together her life. But their small coastal town is hiding many secrets - about families, boyfriends and friendship. Plus, Alex hates Liz for being mean when they were alive. Was she as squeaky clean as she thinks she was? Could it be that she herself is hiding the biggest secret of all? Can Liz discover the truth? And if she does, who can she tell? An engrossing, compelling thriller that peels back the layers of small-town life to expose true, ugly, cruel human nature.

***
Between was an interesting read and a book that I quite happily enjoyed as I was reading it but it did have a lot of things that could have been better about it

This book is described as being like the Lovely Bones which is a fair comparison. Liz has just woken up to find that she is dead on the eve of her 18th birthday. Along with Alex another recently deceased teen she gets to see how life goes on without her and goes back over old memories to see the error of her earlier bitchier ways.

I won't say too much about the plot but I will say that I got half way through and guessed much of how the book was going to go as the story was reasonably predictable. I found the way in which the characters reacted to situation quite odd as they never seemed to get angry for the things that had happened to them (which were pretty unforgivable things) and just let them all breeze past them in a sea of calm.

By the end of the book you are left with quite a bleak and nasty situation in which a main character gets away with something with no come back which annoyed me somewhat.

All in all a book for you if you like ghost stories or ones about those popular kids getting what they deserve.

Comments

Jan von Harz said…
I have been wondering about this book. I always feel that reading about a character that is dead is somewhat pointless though. Not such bleak and nasty is something I need to deal with right now. Thanks for the review!
Anonymous said…
Hmmm, predictability in a book is something I don't like. The premise itself sounds really good though. I think this will have to go on my 'maybe' or 'borrow from the library' list.
Ack, I think that was a pretty big spoiler there.

I haven't read it yet, but am reading some fairly mixed reviews of this one.