by Tess Sharpe
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Publication Date: April 8th 2014
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9781423184621
Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary | Mystery
Source: Publisher
*In exchange for honest review
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Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice.
The first time, she's fourteen, and escapes a near-fatal car accident with scars, a bum leg, and an addiction to Oxy that'll take years to kick.
The second time, she's seventeen, and it's no accident. Sophie and her best friend Mina are confronted by a masked man in the woods. Sophie survives, but Mina is not so lucky. When the cops deem Mina's murder a drug deal gone wrong, casting partial blame on Sophie, no one will believe the truth: Sophie has been clean for months, and it was Mina who led her into the woods that night for a meeting shrouded in mystery.
After a forced stint in rehab, Sophie returns home to a chilly new reality. Mina's brother won't speak to her, her parents fear she'll relapse, old friends have become enemies, and Sophie has to learn how to live without her other half. To make matters worse, no one is looking in the right places and Sophie must search for Mina's murderer on her own. But with every step, Sophie comes closer to revealing all: about herself, about Mina and about the secret they shared. (Goodreads)
Sophie, the main character in the story, has not had the best young-adulthood. She survived a car crash, barely, which lead to her addiction to pain medication. After sobering up, she and her best friend Mina have a confrontation with a masked gunman in the forest, which leads to Mina’s death, and the blame falling on Sophie. After a few months in rehab, Sophie returns home to a world that was completely different than the one she left. With the help of a few friends, Sophie sets out to find out exactly what happened in the forest the night Mina died.
It was interesting reading the story from Sophie’s point of view, because we not only get to experience the story from her while she is clean and sober, but we also experience things from her while she was deeply addicted to pain medication. The story about her addiction was gritty and realistic. She did not have an easy time with everything that had happened, and even with other parts of her life that she couldn’t control. Escaping into her drug-induced bliss was the only way that she could cope. That just shows how imperfect this character was, but I still really, really liked her, and found her really relatable.
There are no perfect characters in this story, and I loved that because the story seemed so much more realistic this way. The secondary characters were very well written, and I found myself enjoying them all. (Well, the good people, anyways.)
The story is told in both present and past tense, the past tense being over a course of a few years. I thought going back and forth in the story would be confusing, but it wasn’t at all, and it was really more interesting reading the story this way. The storyline was completely mysterious and very addictive. I couldn’t stop turning the pages; I had to know what was going to happen, and what had happened in the past, and who the bad guy was. There were also quite a few surprises in the book that really caught me off guard. I read this book in a day, and that doesn’t happen very often with me lately. But I love it when it does!
Overall; I really didn’t know what to think about this book when I first started it, and honestly I really didn’t know if I was going to like it, but the book proved me wrong. I enjoyed the book so much more than I expected to, and now I’m really looking forward to reading more from this talented author in the future. Definitely check out Far From You today!
I saw the cover of this book and it caught my attention, but I've been putting it off because I don't really remember what it was about. I need to pick this up. It sounds beautiful and really emotional. I want to know more about these characters, thanks for the great review.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good read. Great review!
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