Monday Book Rec:
[Image Description: iPhone audiobook of RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA by Kimberly McCreight. Cover shows a girl’s face hidden by blonde hair and a torn black page that stops below the eye.]
Title: Reconstructing Amelia
Author: Kimberly McCreight
Narrator: Khristine Hvam
Received From: Public Library, Overdrive Audiobook
Book Description: When Kate, single mother and law firm partner, gets an urgent phone call summoning her to her daughter’s exclusive private school, she’s shocked. Amelia has been suspended for cheating, something that would be completely out of character for her over-achieving, well-behaved daughter.
Kate rushes to Grace Hall, but what she finds when she finally arrives is beyond comprehension. Her daughter is dead.Despondent over having been caught cheating, Amelia has jumped from the school’s roof in an act of impulsive suicide. At least that’s the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. In a state of shock and overcome by grief, Kate tries to come to grips with this life-shattering news. Then she gets an anonymous text: Amelia didn’t jump.
The moment she sees that message, Kate knows in her heart it’s true. Clearly Amelia had secrets, and a life Kate knew nothing about. Wracked by guilt, Kate is determined to find out what those secrets were and who could have hated her daughter enough to kill. She searches through Amelia’s emails, texts, and Facebook updates, piecing together the last troubled days of her daughter’s life.
Reconstructing Amelia is a stunning debut pause-resistor that brilliantly explores the secret world of teenagers, their clandestine first loves, hidden friendships, and the dangerous cruelty that can spill over into acts of terrible betrayal.
What I Thought: I’m always on the hunt for a good audiobook, it’s much easier to do errands or make myself go to the gym if I’m listening to one. In audiobooks I tend to gravitate towards adult thrillers, something so I don’t get stuck in a YA rut.
Granted, Reconstructing Amelia could be a YA crossover; while Kate, Amelia’s mother, is the protagonist, we get to know Amelia through flashbacks, texts, and emails with her best friend Sylvia, a mysterious boy named Ben, a club of vicious girls called The Magpies, and someone named Dylan whom Amelia was clearly in love with. Through these bits of Amelia’s life, we see the girl she really was, and, like Kate, try to discover what happened when she fell from the roof of Grace Hall.
The murder mystery moves a bit slowly and implausibly at times, but the character of Amelia is so compelling that it’s easy to stay sucked-in. Khristine Hvam’s wonderful narration helps (and perhaps, even enhances this book, as it’s much easier to listen to Amelia’s texts than try to wade through the text-speak the author thinks teens use).
But what makes this book truly work isn’t the murder mystery, but the complex, in-depth relationships Amelia has with those around her–her sometimes-best-friend Sylvia, her mother Kate, Dylan–all of these are fully fleshed-out and compelling to where by the end of the book, the reader feels like they truly know these characters.
There’s also some absolutely great queer rep in this book, though I won’t say much more than that except it was a pleasant surprise and I’m glad it was handled.
Final verdict? Come for the murder mystery and what happened to Amelia, stay for the complex relationships and refreshing queerness.
