Name: Jen Estrella's review of Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
Item: Reconstructing Amelia
Rating: 4
Author: Jen Estrella

Kimberly McCreight

Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is shocked when her daughter's exclusive Brooklyn private school calls to tell her that Amelia—her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old—has been caught cheating. But when Kate arrives at Grace Hall, she's blindsided by far more devastating news: Amelia is dead. Despondent, she's jumped from the school's roof. At least that's what Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. It's what she believes, too, until she gets the anonymous text: Amelia didn't jump. Now, Kate is going to find the truth—no matter where it leads. Sifting through Amelia's e-mails, text messages, and Facebook posts, Kate reconstructs the pieces of her daughter's life and the people in it, uncovering why she was on Grace Hall's roof that day—and how she died. A superb blend of Tana French and Jodi Picoult, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, friends and bullies. It's about how well any parent really knows their child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.

A Novel

Reconstructing Amelia

Jen Estrella

When her high-achieving 15-year-old daughter Amelia supposedly commits suicide after she is caught cheating, litigation lawyer and single mother Kate Baron, leveled by grief, must reconstruct the pieces of Amelia's life to find the truth and vindicate the memory of the daughter whose life she could not save. 100,000 first printing.

Madilyn Taylor

Melissa Palmer

Book #34 Read in 2013
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

Kate, an attorney, receives a phone call from her daughter Amelia's school saying that Amelia is being suspended for cheating on an English paper. By the time Kate arrives at the school to pick Amelia up, Amelia is dead--an apparent suicide from jumping off the school's roof. Kate wants to know why Amelia would do such a thing and begins looking into her daughter's life. . . and finding out that many things were unknown to her about Amelia and her activities. This makes Kate wonder if it was really a suicide and with the help of a police detective, she reopens the investigation.

This book was an excellent read. There were many twists and turns in this book that kept me reading. The characters were flawed yet interesting. The message of bullying and its effects on teenagers was powerful. This was the author's first book but I will keep an eye out for more from her. I heartily recommend reading this book.

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a review.

http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com

Colleen

1.5 Stars 

*An unbelievable drama where nasty people do vicious things in the most predictable ways*


Ah the bookclub curse. Why must you ever haunt me?!

I started optimistically enough. But almost from the first page, I had this odd feeling that I couldn't shake. I kept feeling like I'd read this book before, even though I was positive that I hadn't. That impression only grew as I read on. After much mental exasperation, I finally realized that the book I was thinking of was Where They Found Her. Lo and behold, it is by the same author! Of the many, many books I have read in my lifetime, I have never felt such a strong sense of déjà vu! And in such a bad way! This went far beyond an author’s distinctive writing style. Many authors have distinctive voices. And I’ve read plenty of authors who recycle their works. But I can’t emphasize enough how much it felt like I was reading the same book.

Let’s pause for a moment here. I know that Reconstructing Amelia was published first. There is a possibility that if I’d read these two books in the opposite order, my feelings may have been reversed as well. Then again, I believe I still would have had many of the same complaints about Reconstructing Amelia (more on that later) even if I had not read anything else by McCreight. The similarities just made it even more frustrating to read.

Even though these two books sound quite different on the surface, they do have a lot in common. Mysteries about dead girls, grieving mothers, women obsessed with finding out what happened to said dead girls, teenage mean girls, extremely judgmental parents, oppressive guilt about living up to parental ideals, general shittiness of characters, white elite classism, multiple POV, nonchronological storylines, and partial neoepistolary formats. Both books follow the same format and use the same troupes. So much so that I was able to predict every “twist” from the very beginning. That is not me bragging; that is me pointing out how predictable this story was! Certainly, having read Amelia 2.0 (AKA Where They Found Her), it was easily to see the well-worn rut the plot was trudging down. But even without that, the twists and foreshadowing were so blatantly stated that they lacked all subtly and surprise. This is the type of story where any random fact mentioned with dramatic flourish is 100% guaranteed to turn out to be some pivotal clue. For instance (in a totally fabricated, non-spoiler example), if someone casually mentions Boise, Idaho, you can bet your bottom buck that the killer will turn out to be from Boise, Idaho. There was a lot of, “Did you catch that arbitrary tidbit I mentioned before? Well, I’m going to mention it again just in case. And again. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”

Reconstructing Amelia is the type of story that revolves entirely around people being nasty for no reason other than to create sensational drama. That is a huge pet peeve of mine. I hate senseless drama. Why perpetuate bullying and social ostracization by portraying it as entertaining? This book felt like Where'd You Go, Bernadette rewritten as a thriller. And that is not a complement! I don’t enjoy reading books where every single character is unbearably nasty. Such stories smother under their own malevolent, self-destructive derisiveness. Every character was unlikeable. Every plot point was predictable. The overall story was farfetched and tedious. Here is a prime example of how ridiculous this story is: no detective would ever take a victim’s family member to interview suspects! That is just absurd!

All in all, I would say that Where They Found Her is worth a try. It isn’t stellar, but it is a decent story and a noticeable improvement from McCreight’s debut. Even without the déjà vu, I still won’t recommend Reconstructing Amelia to anyone. This book is utterly predictable and clichéd. 


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 2 Stars
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 1 Star

Rebecca Shaffer

The book equivalent of a Lifetime Movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Page turner with lots of twists, some of the twists seem like they are only there for the shock value. Make sure you are in the mood for something a bit soapy & sad.

Nicole Dykeman

1/17/2019 - I don't like thrillers. Why in the world did I give this five stars? I didn't love it, didn't hate it. I've felt the same about pretty much every thriller I've ever read. 3 stars. 

3/8/2017 - This was great - especially as a book club read, like it was for me. Every time I thought I knew what was happening, there was another plot twist!

Celeste Richardson

2.5 out of 5, rounded up to 3.

This was not my favorite book. But that’s not the book’s fault. I’m just not a fan of contemporary murder mysteries unless they’re penned by Nora Roberts, my favorite guilty-pleasure author. I would have never picked this book up on my own, but joining a real-life book club has gotten me out of my fantasy comfort zone. All of that being said, the hatred I had for the first half of the book mellowed, and I sped through the last half. 

I think one of my big problems with contemporary thrillers is that their plot twists are over-hyped. Going into a book like this or Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, I psych myself up to be shocked. But then I’m not. Sure, there are some surprises, but I end up predicting many of the twists. Perhaps this is from overexposure, but the books lose a bit of their zing for me, regardless. Also, contemporary thrillers tend to have an overabundance of unlikeable characters, and this book was no exception. I understand that the writers are going for realism here, but their view on reality is depressingly pessimistic in my opinion. When characters have no redeeming qualities, I have a hard time connecting to them and caring about their stories.

Once I passed the halfway point in the story, I did start to care a bit more about Amelia and Karen, but I was never quite able to cement a connection with them. And, unfortunately, none of the “big reveals” in the plot were surprising to me, but I won’t get into those as I’m trying for a spoiler-free review. But I did enjoy this one more than both of the aforementioned books, though I rated Gone Girl higher because I had read less of this genre at that time and was thus more surprised by the twists. All in all, it was a decent read, and would probably appeal more to a reader who doesn’t prefer their stories filled with dragons and magic and sassy talking swords.

Robin M Cabana

While I mostly enjoyed this book, I would give it about 3.5 stars. The story is heartbreaking: Kate is trying to figure out what led to her teen-age daughter to commit suicide. The chapters alternate back and forth between Kate and Amelia's point of view. Kate's a busy lawyer raising her daughter on her own. Amelia's a bookish 15-year-old trying to fit in at her fancy Brooklyn prep school. Kate's chapter's are heartbreaking as she deals with her loss and tries to make sense of it all. Amelia's chapters show how hard it is to be a teen - up against all kinds of peer pressure and bullying in this age of texting and Facebook. The story reminds me a bit of Gone Girl meets Gossip Girl.

So while I really liked Kate and Amelia - some of the other teen characters seemed annoying and vapid. I guess I prefer John Green's brand of teenager. And as the mystery's solution began to emerge, that's when it kind of unraveled for me. It seems like there could have been a better way to resolve it all. I especially found Ben's role really unbelievable. It's not that I was particularly surprised or disliked the ending, I just kind of felt let down.

Samiha Tasnim

"Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story . . . —Virginia Woolf


“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” Virginia Woolf


"She felt very young, at the same time unspeakably aged.” Virginia Woolf


"Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.” Virginia Woolf


"I am rooted, but I flow.” Virginia Woolf

But the tour did remind me that my life had been bigger than just that one moment. One girl. One set of words on paper. That I had gone through other things before-good and terrible, funny and awful-and I had survived.
 
I don't get why people have to market every existing thriller novel that came after Gone Girl as "Fans of Gone Girl will love this" or "Fans of Gillian Flynn will enjoy this" or "Behold the new Gone Girl" etc. This book is not like Gone Girl at all. It's so much more. 

I'll keep it brief. This was a surprisingly good book packed with social issues (stigma, bullying, etc.), twists and turns, and the occasional emotional punches. 

Well, okay; there might have been one or two unanswered questions, but I'd still say this was worth the read. 

And this epilogue ugh: 
(view spoiler)[
  
    It was too late to change anything. Too late to make different choices. To be a better mother than she had been. Kate could only be the mother that she was, Amelia’s mother—the curator of her memory, the keeper of her secrets, the cherisher of her heart. That, she would always be.
  
 (hide spoiler)]

Silje Risøy Helgerud

Spennende og ubehagelig, men også litt klisjéfylt og forutsigbart på enkelte områder.

Emily C Peterson

Average. The mystery itself was meh and sexuality was a semi-spoiler, which I do not enjoy. Overall I was left underwhelmed with this book.

Allyson Marrs

Totally addicting, sad, and engrossing. I loved the storytelling techniques and how everything pieced together. Great story that doesn't disappoint at any point of the build up or resolution.

Michael Hessling

I liked the structure of the book, but Kate was just unbelievable. A bad mom who interfered with the investigation out of guilt. Bah.

Jen Estrella &
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

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Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight