This review is also posted on my blog, In The Good Books.

Gabby wakes up in hospital with no memory of the night that put her there, but what happened was obvious. With the blood alcohol concentration of a keg and in her hand the keys to her boyfriend's car wrapped around a tree beside her, her future looks to be a blur of DUI charges, jail time, and perhaps the most daunting in her mother's eyes, a face mangled by the crash. In the aftermath, she'll question if the events of that night were real More...

It was such a great book!! I really like it the begnning like how she couldn't really remember anything from the accident. I even like it more because sersouslythat can happen to anyone. Made it more realistic. :)

It started interestingly enough with a sense of confusion and not knowing that was conveyed quite effectively. Except the trip down memory lane was not a pleasant one because in the end all I felt was sorry for this girl who's a bit too used to describing herself as “sub regular.” And lost memory or not, her story was funny~ just not in a funny ha ha way. Her running commentary on being sub-regular and being the moon to Billy’s earth was in simple terms: off putting and quite disappointing. Yet, More...

FIRST POSTED ON www.fiction-freak.blogspot.com

EDIT: I just re-read this and I realized how immature I was when it came to reviewing. Wow. Anyways, jsut needed to say I KNOW IT ISN'T VERY PROFESSIONAL.


So because I'm new to the whole blogging/book reviewing business, I don't receive ARC's. I just have to deal with whatever books I buy from Amazon or Barnes and Nobles, or library books. But, thanks to a certain giveaway on Goodreads, I finally managed to get my hands on Where it Began, which comes More...

How far would you go to cover for a friend? Would you allow your reputation to be torn to tatters? Gabby is the main character of this book. She doesn’t make the best choices, she is a fairly good student, and she has a boyfriend and friends. Overall, Gabby is a normal, everyday teenage girl. One wouldn’t think that underage drinking, suspensions from school, therapy sessions, etc… could happen to a normal, everyday girl.

One bad decision can lead to a lifetime of regret. For Gabby, this slightl More...

Ann Redisch Stampler’s debut novel Where It Began is about a girl named Gabby Gardiner who is pulled from a horrific car crash and has no memory of what happened or what caused the crash. Where It Began shows what happened before the crash, the aftermath, and Gabby’s eventual discovery of the truth.

Read the rest of my review here

Review originally posted to Words at Home June 7, 2012: http://www.wordsathome.ca/2012/06/whe...

Where it Began is an utterly compelling and poignant look into the life of a sub-regular turned, girlfriend-of-a-golden-god teenage girl. It is a completely addictive story and I guarantee that you will be glued to this book within the first few pages. Between Ann Stampler’s unique and utterly fabulous writing style, her incredibly three-dimensional characters and captivating plot she has become my fa More...

Stampler's debut is amazing! The last few chapters changed EVERYTHING. Review to come!

FULL REVIEW
Where It Began was truly an amazing debut by Ann Redisch Stampler! The novel had many aspects that a contemporary fan would love.
Gabby was an interesting main character. Stampler portrayed her well enough for her readers to really understand what she was going through after her accident. I could really feel how hard it was for Gabby to deal without her memory of that night when the crash took place.
A More...

All Gabby remembers after waking up in a hospital is her boyfriends car wrapped around a tree. Ever since that night when she supposedly stole her bf’s car and drove it after using alcohol, Gabby’s life turns upside down. She is sucked into a life of false beauty to cover up her bruises, lawyers and probation’s, and most of all a secret “love.” Through her whole ordeal Gabby tries to stay strong, but when she realizes her boyfriend is sleeping with other girls when he’s supposed to be in love wi More...

High school girl obsessed with her boyfriend wakes up after a car accident and is told she drunkenly drove boyfriend's car into a tree. However, she has no memory of the incident. An un-put-down-able novel!

A fine debut young adult novel. Starts with a shocking discovery and does not let up. Do not let the cover speak for the novel. This is not a sappy romance. Great potential discussion on the power and influence of the elite class...scary, really.

Summary:
This book is a little hard to summarize because it is not a typical chronological story line. Because of the unusual timeline, how do you figure out what to say in a summary that doesn't give a spoiler? If you have found that part of this summary is a spoiler, I'm sorry. If you are worried, just skip this section.

Gabby wakes up in a hospital bed after a horrific car accident, but she doesn't remember it. What happened to her? Through a mix of flashbacks, IMs, text messages, Gabby starts More...

Hallie Hayes
English 231
March 5, 2013

The book I read was called “Where It Began” by Ann Redisch Stampler. The author’s purpose for writing this book was to tell the story of a young girl named Gabby Gardiner who wakes up in the hospital with absolutely no memory of how she got there. Gabby wakes up and she is told how she was found: lying unconscious on the ground with multiple scars and a head injury, with a wrecked car that without a doubt she was driving. Now Gabby is left to pick up the piec More...

Gabby has always been invisible and normal, she's good at art and that's pretty much it. But then the summer going into her Junior Year Gabby's mom gets her a makeover, enter Billy Nash, the hottest, rich and most popular boy at school. Soon enough Billy and Gabby are going out. Everything is perfect but then the night happens. The night where Gabby and Billy enter a party together and then the next thing she knows she wakes up in a hospital bed, everything hurting. The police and nurses soon in More...

Gabby Gardiner wakes up with absolutely no memory of how she got there. All she can remember is all the events leading up to her waking up in the hospital. Everyone is telling her how she was found: lying unconscious on the ground with multiple scars and a head injury, with a wrecked car that without a doubt she was driving. This isn't what she expected when she arrived at the party that night, but it IS what everyone is telling her that happened, so it MUST be true. Now Gabby is left to pick up More...

No. Just no. This book is really stupid, for lack for a more sophisticated term. Let me tell you why.
(Spoilers ahead.)

First of all, it is WAY too long. By a good 100 pages or something, in which nothing of consequence happens.

Second, there is zero character development. Everyone is one-dimensional--including the main character, whose head we're in! Oh sure, she's an 'artist.' Except that only gets mentioned here and there, instead of being fully shown or explained or reasoned. It's like the auth More...

Where it Began by Ann Redisch Stampler is a compelling story about a teenage girl, Gabby, who wakes up in a hospital after a horrific car accident. She is blamed for the accident but she has no recollection of the events that happened that night.

Ann puts the reader deep into Gabby’s head and exposes them to all of the intimate emotions that she feels after that night in question. The way Ann describes Gabby is convincing and real. She makes bad choices and can get into a bad mood at times. This More...

I think every teen should read this book, especially girls.

While the cover of this book is gorgeous, the story inside is dark and emotional- Just goes to show you, don't judge a book by its cover, which happens to be one the many strong themes portrayed through Stampler's debut.

Gabby is a complex heroine. She's lost, her parents aren't real authority figures (her mother being concerned only with appearances and social ranking). So she never feels truly loved at home, enter Billy Nash. High scho More...

[Cross-posted at my blog]

Where it Began opens with a fairly simple premise: a teenage girl wakes up in the hospital, having barely survived a car accident. She has no memory of the night in question, but she's certain she's to blame.

The narrative voice is fresh, crisp, and incredibly witty. I absolutely loved it. (Also, there is BILLY NASH. BILLY NAAAAAAAAAAAASH.)

What makes the book stand out so much? I shall tell you!

Narrative Voice
Gabby's narration is fabulously sarcastic. She considers herse More...

I feel like it deserves two stars, but I can't bring myself to do it. It wasn't a BAD book, just not really a book that made sense to me. Cause there's Gabby, and she woke up in a hospital, not remembering anything or anyone. She's like blank. And her boyfriend's not there to talk to her. And then I couldn't figure out if she went back in time to tell the story, or after the accident. And if she was officially out of hospital. And the most confusing part was, why the heck is Billy on probation. More...

Maybe I was just being biased, considering I'm a teen who has lived in Los Angeles all her life, but the characters in this book, though hard to forget, were hard to forget for the wrong reasons. Parties, drugs, accidents, and extreme makeovers, this book takes glamorizing the life of kids in LA to an extreme. But this wasn't the only issue I had with the book. Gabby's, the main character, mother gets Gabby an extreme makeover the summer before Junior Year. With blonder, straighter hair, tighter More...

I loved this book. Mostly I loved the voice of Gabby Giffords, a girl who is growing up in the "Three B's" (Brentwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills). Gabby just leaps off the page. Her voice is so believable that I was laughing out loud at her snarky, witty observations of her family (an absent-through-alcohol father and a you-can-find-happiness-through-shopping mother) and her fellow inhabitants of "The Three B's." I can still hear her in my head and wish I could call her up and talk to her. Actually More...

I was so excited to get this book in advance from Amazon Vine. It sounded interesting and I was in desperate need of a young adult book to bring back my passion for this genre. Unfortunately, this book was not as great as I was hoping it would be. I think I will be in the minority in saying that this book is not one that will live up to the hype, but this is only my opinion.

Gabby was not a character I enjoyed. I was to the point of wanting to rip her from the pages of the book and slap some sens More...

I love books that begin with a heavy dose of mystery. Anne Redisch Stampler does a fantastic job of throwing the reader in the deep end of the pool, but not drowning them. I love how she begins Where It Began, and the way she builds up the plot throughout the story.

Reading Gabby waking up was a lot like being Gabby. You have no idea who this girl is, where she’s from, or what the heck landed her in the hospital. The more I read about Gabby, the more I just came to love her. I wanted to protect h More...

The book starts out really strong. Gabby wakes up in a hospital with a closed brain injury. First of all, she doesn't know who she is, second of all, she has absolutely no clue what happened. All she knows is that she wants Billy. Billy is her boyfriend. His car was decimated around a tree with Gabby lying on the road nearby, holding the keys. She spends the first part of the book regaining memories and having Mommy run interference with the police. But the honest to goodness truth is that she d More...

The premise for WHERE IT BEGAN hooked me from the second I saw it. I am always looking for a good contemporary novel so I couldn't wait to try this one out. While I loved Gabby's voice, I did feel a bit underwhelmed with a few things in the novel. I will give Stampler props on not revealing what really happened to Gabby in the first place. It kept me guessing and I couldn't wait to find out the truth. If you are a fan of contemporary, I would recommend giving WHERE IT BEGAN a shot.

Gabby is one o More...

When I first heard about this book I can honestly say I wasn't sure. So I bought it brought it home and it sat for a few weeks before I found the courage to read it. Gabs is a normal girl going to a pricey school where just about everyone ignores her. Her mother forces a makeover on her during the summer and when school starts it all changes for her. She becomes popular, gets the hot jock, new "friends", and she thinks life is okay.

What I truly like about this book is that you feel you can actua More...

Note: This review covers two books--Where It Began and The Catastrophic History of You and Me. SPOILERS for both are here though I'll try to hide them!

We all have our guilty pleasure corner of the bookshelf. For some, it's a bodice-ripping romance novel. For others, it's that hastily written in tie-in novel.* And then, there's me, the reader whose general interest is the mystery, science-fiction or fantasy section, drawn for some unknown reason to the world of young adult novels.

*Confession: If More...

This book can go either of two ways: well written or infuriatingly simplistic. I'll settle for a combo, heavy on the latter choice. Gabby has been thrust awkwardly into the social spotlight by her social climbing mother. Once she is perched anxiously and confusingly at the top of her high school clique as the arm candy of the most popular boy in school, it is all threatened by a terrible car accident.

Gabby suffers from retrograde amnesia, and she can't remember the details of how she wrapped he More...

I remember seeing this while ordering books and thinking it looked really interesting. Unfortunately, the small blurb in a catalog was the best that this story was going to get for me.
Gabby wakes up in the emergency room unable to remember anything about why she might be there or about herself. The only thing in the forefront of her mind is her boyfriend, Billy. She soon learns that she was driving Billy's car while drunk and smashed into a tree - severely injuring herself and disfiguring her More...