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Reconstructing Amelia
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Comment As You Read | Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
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Sammee
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rated it 2 stars
Apr 30, 2013 05:15PM
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So far it feels like a mix of Gossip Girl, The Skulls with an air of a made for TV movie that would run on Lifetime. Oh man, here's to me being wrong, hopefully
I'm still in the 190s on the library waiting list and Sammee's first impressions are not making me want to splurge and buy it! Sam, do you have a hard copy? Maybe I can borrow from you when you're done. :-)
Oh duh. You have an ereader copy. Oh well! I will wait
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I'm now 145 on the waiting list. Movin' along! But I just got the Where She Went via e-loan, so I'll bide my time with that one for now. Hope Reconstructing Amelia gets better!
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Okay - I just bought the book using a gift certificate I had. I had mixed feelings about buying it, vs enjoying being number 145 on the waiting list, but figured why not. Will start it after I finish Where She Went (I'm 3/4 through with that one).
Page 124; I'm finding it overall entertaining, and I'm getting drawn into the mini-mysteries, but I agree with Sammee. It feels like there's a lot of this sort of thing out there right now - on TV and in literature - and I'm not sure that this is contributing anything terribly new. I'm also not totally feeling Kate as a character, so it makes it hard to get a real visceral sense of her loss. Still...it's still got me reading! (Enjoyed Where She Went, by the way!)
Page 157. Still not feeling the emotions. From anyone. I'm reading one of the Amelia passages and have my own thoughts about who she might "like" but, although the author is taking us places plot wise, she really isn't making me feel the characters.
As Sammee predicted, with a free afternoon, I've finished. Lifetime movie from start to finish.
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this book sucks! I can't I just can't. the characters have no depth to them. the story is so predictable its not even cleverly written to make it an enjoyable read. I think I'm throwing in the towel on this onw
You have to finish it (or Wikipedia it) to see the implausible Lifetime wrap up!
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Sammee wrote: "fine I"ll finish it but I wont be happy about it, lol"LOL
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my review: In a nutshell this book is what I said it would be - a Lifetime movie meets Gossip Girl mixed with The Skulls & a dash of Law&order: SVU for, an attempt, of good measure. If that is your sort of thing then enjoy but if you are looking for imagination, colorful writing, complex characters & a story that doesn't have plot holes then I suggest you pass on this book. EW review gave this an 'A' calling it "this year's Gone Girl — you remember Gillian Flynn's best-selling nail-biter of 2012" WRONG! That book was genius - twisted and haunted you long after that last page. It's laughable to put these two books side by side. Reconstructing Amelia - I could go on but it's not even worth it. WACKNESS!
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I am seriously enjoying the Carlos Ruiz Zafon books. Reading The Angel's Game now. They scratch a very particular book itch -- good stories, well-written. Not perfect, but enjoyable. I haven't yet read Gone Girl, but I think I'm gonna put a hold on it at the library!
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I find the Kate chapters very interesting. It must be tough to have an idea of your daughter in your head and have all of that shattered.
As far as feeling emotions, I'm not "feeling" anything but I also don't think what's written on the page is false either. Still have half of the book left but those are my thoughts right now.
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And I found it enjoyable but not great. So I guess I'm in between Sammee and li! It kept me hooked, but I think the quality and artificial plot devices were, for me, lifetime through and through. Sometimes a lifetime movie can be enjoyable tho. The characters felt poorly drawn and I wanted more!
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I didn't feel disconnected from the characters. They were flawed but I think that was the point and it helped to make Kate "any mom" and Amelia "any girl".
I don't think this book was labeled young adult, but I that's what I thought when I read it. I won it at a book store drawing and when I was walking home with it my neighbor's 13 year old daughter kept telling me how much she loved it. She was reading Girl Gone and said they're 2 completely different books, but she identified with how realistic Reconstructing Amelia was.I don't think it's a Lifetime movie because the last time I saw Lifetime there was a movie about cheerleaders and a pregnancy pact? I also remember a daughter hooking up with her mom's boyfriend and the mom owned a bakery? This is why I don't pay for cable. :P I think 50 Shades of Grey was Lifetime. Definitely.
Kate being so indepth with the investigation wasn't realistic but neither is Carrie's "rent controlled" apartment and wardrobe in Sex and the City. One could even argue that boy wizards aren't realistic (though I still believe!). She's writing fiction, so I'm fine with that.
Reading other reviews on GR, people kept saying Kate was depressing. Newsflash, Sherlock, she lost her daughter. You want her out partying with Casey Anthony? Lol. Along with the fact that her classmates are collection of "mental disorders, drug addicts and porno wannabes." I wouldn't use these words to describe them. I think they're teenagers. Plain and simple. Is everyone is flawed. YES! Just the way I like my stories. You know who else is flawed, the entire cast of: Community, Arrested Development, Seinfeld, RoseAnne, Under the Dome, About A Boy and basically every other well written tv, movie, and book. I love flaws! I love them because we get out of the Disney fairy tale too many people are living in.
I think if you take this book along the lines of a YA, beach read, type book- it's fine. Meets the criteria. No, it's not winning the Nobel Prize for literature, but I don't expect it to. But I was entertained and intrigued. :D
(Reviews mentioned: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...)
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Sammee wrote: "if you consider this YA then fine it's not that bad but if this is an Adult fiction novel then I'm sticking to my original views."When they did the giveaway it was all YA books so I just assumed. But now realizing that it's not YA I complete understand Sammee. I've got to get on Girl Gone now. Everyone has said that one is good.
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Page 194 Hallelujah! I finally got it from the library. Ok, to start with, I'm enjoying the read but I definitely see it as YA not adult, whether McCreight considers it adult or not. As a mom, I find that Kate is flawed not only by her workaholic no life status but by her refusal to see her 15 y/o as being on the verge of becoming an adult. In today's world 15 is the new 20 (at least). (Though this is coming from a woman who's only child has Aspberger's syndrome so he was always allowed to swear at home so his father and I could teach him when it was appropriate and when it wasn't.) I am most curious about Amelia's relationship with Phillip Woodhouse the Headmaster of the school. I think I've already figured out that Ben is Amelia's dad trying to get to know her, but I could be wrong. (It's been known to happen quite frequently.) Pros to the story for me on that Kate doesn't except that Amelia committed Suicide. It's reassuring to know that your mom will stand up for you even after you're dead. Another pro albeit unrealistic is the leeway Kate has with work. She goes from being a workaholic to a "ghost" at the office. So far (though he's very new) I like Lew's character. I'm waiting until I finish the book to list my cons. I'm also rushing through this one because I don't think it will be renewable at the library.
Finished. Major con - totally predictable. I think I reviewed it fairly and I originially gave it 4 stars because I did enjoy the read but I downgraded it to 3 because I didn't feel comfortable recommending it to anyone. Though you didn't get a lot of him, Lew was my favorite character. Jeremy kept making me think of Peter McNickel's character on Alley McBeal. Oh, the one surprise, Zadie's mom. Not that she had an affair with Jeremy but that she was, clinically speaking, a total whack job. Hate and jealousy can do very evil things to a person, especially fictional ones.
