Danya Kukafka

As featured on Simon Mayo's BBC Radio 2 Book Club. ‘Dark and elegant’ Mail on Sunday ‘A creepy, psychological drama’ GQ ‘A haunting debut’ Stylist Who are you when no one is watching? When beloved high school student Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched – not the boy who loved her too much, not the girl who wanted her perfect life, not the police officer assigned to investigate. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three unforgettable characters – Cameron, Jade, and Russ – must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth, or both. Intoxicating and intense, Girl in Snow is a compelling mystery set in small-town America. By focusing on those affected by the crime, rather than the crime itself, Danya Kukafka asks – what’s the difference between who people seem to be and who they really are? Winner of a 2018 Hearst Big Book Award: Good Housekeeping's Crime Book of the Year. Shortlisted for the 2018 CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger.

Girl in Snow

"When fifteen-year-old Lucinda Hayes is found dead in her sleepy Colorado suburb, the secret lives of three people connected to her are revealed: the social outcast who loved her from afar, the jaded girl who despised her, and the policeman investigating her death"--

A Novel

Not horrible. Ok, imteresting character development but the story was a little slow for me.
Probably wouldn't recommend but it wasn't the worst book I have ever read.

Alexia

Thank you Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for he ARC! 

The author is a master at making the reader dislike all point view characters, and secondary ones too.
This would be a good first step for people who are looking to get into thrillers but don't know where to start.

Paige Green

Rating: 1.5/5

Genre: Thriller (more about this in the review)

Recommended Age: 16+ (violence, witchcraft, stalking, murder)

I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched—not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters—Cameron, Jade, and Russ—must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth, or both. In crystalline prose, Danya Kukafka offers a brilliant exploration of identity and of the razor-sharp line between love and obsession, between watching and seeing, between truth and memory.

Compulsively readable and powerfully moving, Girl in Snow offers an unforgettable reading experience and introduces a singular new talent in Danya Kukafka.

In the wake of Murder on the Orient Express becoming a movie, I had an itching for some thrillers. One I’ve had on my to-read list was this book. The synopsis sounded good and so I decided to give it a try. In the end I had to DNF this book. The good points about this book is that it’s not a typical thriller and it has more of a YA feel to it. The book focuses on the suspects rather than the crime. The book was interesting in that it left the reader in suspense on who the actual perpetrator was. However, those were the only things I thought were good about the book.

I had a hard time reading this book because of how drawn-out the writing was. The author constantly went off on tangents and the author seems to have the Stephen King syndrome of writing in which an author will write for awhile on a topic in the book that has no point to the plot whatsoever. It became very hard to wade through all of the detail to get to the meat of the story and it was the main reason I DNF’d the book. Because of how the book was written, the plot and pacing heavily suffered from the writing. The plot was lost in the words and the pacing drew to a standstill at several times in the book. The characters in the book were also not very well developed at the point I stopped reading and they were very weird choices for main characters (2 of them being high schoolers) considering that this book was supposed to be an adult thriller. The victim is not a character I found myself to care about and the professionals in this book seemed to be way too dumb to be realistic. The book really shouldn’t have been marketed as a thriller because you spend more time on the suspects and not on the crime. This book also switches between multiple POVs.

Verdict: Overall, I found this book to not be my cup of tea. It was the opposite of everything I hoped for and skimming the back it seems like the ending and the killer is a cliché type character. I think this book could have been rewrote in so many different ways and it really could have been better if it focused on the crime rather than the daily lives of the suspects. Give this book a try if you want to read something different than your usual thriller.

Kerri McDonald

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through a giveaway at the group Nothing But Reading Challenges

This was a good, solid thriller. Not amazing. Not horrid. Just... good.

This is the story of the death of Lucinda Hayes and three people (Cameron, Jade, and Russ) whose lives are thrown off-kilter by this event. Cameron was in love with her. Jade was jealous of her. And Russ is a rather reluctant cop who has to help discover who killer her.

Like I said, this was an overall good book. I enjoyed the story and the shifting POVs. I thought the suspense was held at a good level and I thought the pacing was good. The twist wasn't all that surprising, but it felt more real than a lot of twists in modern thrillers. I think my main issue with this book was the characters. They all just seemed... generic? I felt like I had seen these characters in multiple other books. There was nothing there that really resonated with me. That's probably just me, but there you have it. I will say that the writing was amazingly beautiful. This author definitely has a way with words!

All in all, there were some good things, there were some okay things, and there were some awesome things. Mix it all together and you have, as I said, a good read.

Renee Blankenship

I'm giving this 4.5 stars! 

"It makes you wonder doesn't it- how its possible to be a secondary character in your own story." p.220

Goodness gracious, this book. Where should I begin? I mean honestly. Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka is such a brilliantly written journey from page one to the final turn of the last page I don't know what to say other than simply READ IT. And I can't say enough how much I appreciate Simon Books for sending me this copy (along with that super cute snow globe!!! heart eyes!). I've had my eye on Girl in Snow since the Spring, getting more and more excited as the release date (August 1st!) marched closer. I don't often feel that way about books or upcoming releases, but this one really struck me from the first time I read a summary and I just knew it was going to be something special. All I can say is, well done Danya Kukafka!! This book is one of my favorites of the year, by far!

I must admit, I was slightly surprised by the direction this story took (from the small amount of reviews I read prior as well as the summary, I took it to be a thriller/murder mystery in a small town). And it was, a murder mystery for sure, but oh man Girl in Snow is much much more than that. To its bones, a character study of who we are when we aren't putting on a show for those around us, who we are when in the dark of our bedroom alone or hiding in the bathroom. Who we are when we think no one is watching, essentially, when our thoughts are free to roam unfettered.

Girl in Snow spans a few days, beginning with the discovery of a girl, Lucinda, murdered and left in the snow of the school playground. From there we meet our trio of characters: Cameron, the boy who silently watched Lucinda, stood outside of her house at night and drew her face over and over from memory because he loved her. Jade, the friend/not friend who shared a babysitting job with Lucinda and has done her fair share of watching from her own bedroom window. And finally, Russ, the cop who has an emotional history with Cameron's father and is placed on the case to find Lucinda's murderer.

One of the best things about Girl in Snow is how these three characters end up entwined, affecting each other's lives in seemingly small and then ultimately large ways at the culmination of the story. Each character is written in such a way that seeing so vividly inside their mind, their thoughts and feelings uncensored, makes you root for them. I crossed my fingers that neither Cameron, Russ or Jade had anything to do with Lucinda's death. By the end I felt they were each deserving of finding their own happiness and place in the world.

I pictured their neighborhood and the adjoining school almost like a movie set, with characters moving through and around each other while the story unfolds, the mountains of Colorado peaked in the distant and everything bathed in a blueish purple light reflected off the snow. I really feel that Kukafka did a remarkable job not only creating this setting which on the surface seems pretty standard/nothing special, just a small town, but in her way giving it its own life and color. Kukafka's writing was truly one of my favorite things about this book.

I also appreciated very much that after the murderer is brought to light, the story doesn't end there. We keep reading, seeing the characters in the aftermath of this news and how it affects each of them. I loved that. So many standard "thrillers" leave you right when the murder is solved and the bad guy taken away. More meaningful than any other part of this story to me was the chance we are given as the reader to continue following the characters we've been getting to know for the last three hundred pages, past the standard "ending".

Laura

It's no secret that I haven't been impressed with my "most anticipated" releases this year. From the disappointing The Roses of May to the laughably bad Violet Grenade to the even more disappointing The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, I haven't been having much luck with the books I was actually planning on reading this year. And yet it's ironic that the one I've probably liked the most- this one- is the one that, as much as I wanted to read, I was preparing myself for disappointment. The reviews were all three stars give or take a half a star. And, ironically, perhaps preparing myself for disappointment is exactly what I needed to do the whole time, because I found myself pleasantly surprised by the book, much the same way I found myself pleasantly surprised by Night Film despite finding that novel under less than flattering means.

First the good, because there is a lot of it in this novel. Kukafka is a very good writer and I genuinely am excited to see where she goes next, because with a little more practice her writing can shine in a very Cormac McCarthy way. Her prose here reminded me of his prose in The Road, though I do prefer the writing in The Road. She was a little more verbose, and I had a hard time getting behind some of her characters' thoughts, feelings, and observations, which for me sometimes bordered on over the top and seemed unrealistic. However, I admire her restraint when it comes to things like dialogue; for the most part her characters spoke realistically and any obnoxious John Greenish monologues were appropriately absent. It was realistic that these deep, inner thoughts were confined to the mind and not spoken out loud except by accident, though I admit I would probably hate any of Jade's screenplays if they actually became movies. 

The characters were gripping too, and wholly unlike any other character I've encountered before. Well, that's an exaggeration, and now that I think about it I don't think it was necessarily the characters themselves that were original, I think it was the way that they were written. I'm not going to call them realistic, but you know what, I think I would end up disappointed if these characters were realistic. The book had a kind of mystical quality surrounding it that I really enjoyed, an almost unintentional one and I think a lot of that had to do with her lovely writing. It was an effortless, almost accidental mystical aura, one that many books (Pointe, Claw comes to mind) try and fail at. And, despite the outside world being mentioned, the town kind of had this snow globe-like feel to it, that I really enjoyed. Of all the characters, I think I liked Cameron the best, but frankly I don't really think I liked anyone all that much. They were fascinating to read about, though, and I had a hard time putting this book down at points.

All that said, I did think this book lost the plot for a while there and kind of got off track as a result. When that happened the beautiful prose got tiresome, and I wished that the editor had told her so. And while I did like how Lucinda always kind of had this flat presence to her, it was great commentary about how you never really know anyone, I wished she had more of a major presence in the novel. I got the feeling after awhile that it was somebody else's idea to have her write a thriller and she wasn't really too happy about it, but went along with it because character studies aren't really a big thing anymore. Eh, I don't know. All I do know is, if you were looking for a Paula Hawkins or Gillian Flynn thriller, this ain't it. I suppose that this type of mystery is more of a Tana French-type, though take away the police procedural elements. Which is disappointing and bears repeating- even though a cop is a main character, do not expect a police procedural.

Continue reading this review on my blog here: https://bookwormbasics.blogspot.com/2...

Girl in Snow

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