The Amateurs by Sara Shepard
Why?
So I know this is getting a bit boring but yes another one on the list from BOOKWORMS: Leeds Book Club. I've joined the Book Riot Challenge so expect some different reasons for why coming up.....
What?
Otherwise known as amazon spiel:
Everyone's dying to know the truth . . .
When Aerin Kelly was eleven, she idolised her seventeen-year-old sister, Helena, and they did everything together. They made Claymation movies and posted them to YouTube. They made fun of Windmere-Carruthers, the private school they attended, they invented new flavours for their parents' organic ice cream shop, and they dressed up their golden retriever, Buster. But when Helena went into senior year things started to change. Rather than being Aerin's inseparable sister, she started to push her away. Then, on a snowy winter's day, Helena vanished.
Four years later, Helena's body is found. Wracked with grief and refusing to give up on her sister, Aerin spends months trying to figure out what exactly happened to Helena and who killed her. But the police have no leads. A young, familiar officer named Thomas wants to help and suggests she checks out a website called Case Not Closed. Hesitantly, she posts, and when teenagers Seneca and Maddox show up on her doorstep offering to help investigate she accepts in desperation. Both have suffered their own losses and also posted to the site with no luck, so they are hoping this case might be the one they crack. But as their investigation begins, it seems that maybe it's no accident that they are all together, and that maybe the crimes have something - or someone - in common.
Everyone's dying to know the truth . . .
When Aerin Kelly was eleven, she idolised her seventeen-year-old sister, Helena, and they did everything together. They made Claymation movies and posted them to YouTube. They made fun of Windmere-Carruthers, the private school they attended, they invented new flavours for their parents' organic ice cream shop, and they dressed up their golden retriever, Buster. But when Helena went into senior year things started to change. Rather than being Aerin's inseparable sister, she started to push her away. Then, on a snowy winter's day, Helena vanished.
Four years later, Helena's body is found. Wracked with grief and refusing to give up on her sister, Aerin spends months trying to figure out what exactly happened to Helena and who killed her. But the police have no leads. A young, familiar officer named Thomas wants to help and suggests she checks out a website called Case Not Closed. Hesitantly, she posts, and when teenagers Seneca and Maddox show up on her doorstep offering to help investigate she accepts in desperation. Both have suffered their own losses and also posted to the site with no luck, so they are hoping this case might be the one they crack. But as their investigation begins, it seems that maybe it's no accident that they are all together, and that maybe the crimes have something - or someone - in common.
"The Amateurs" begins by reminding us of our firmly modern, social media led world where we trust our interpretation. Luckily for our character Seneca, the slight surprise about her case not closed chat friend Maddy turns out to be a good one. Well, I'm shallow, I thought it was a good one. It took Seneca a lot longer to come to terms with it. She doesn't like to be surprised and as the story moves forward, we understand why.
The Amateur sleuths' interest in crime solving comes from a mixture of places; some are looking for a crowd which will accept their true often hidden selves and others have been forced there through their own personal painful dealings with unsolved crimes. I found the back stories were excellently extracted. Rather than overwhelming the reader with tears and obvious physical demonstrations of sadness, the breadth of feeling allowed and how it was expressed was true to the character's portrayal.
There were a couple of characters that distracted and irritated me. Catherine. There was a hint that she would become multi layered but it did not happen. I wanted to skip past the parts that featured her but kept with it in the hope that she would suddenly become interesting. You can't win them all. Or like them all is more accurate. There was a bit too much pretty in this book - the importance of it, the definition of it. I understand that the definition of the self features strongly in our journey through young adulthood but that is not a reason to pretend that pretty is a moral story. It isn't.
I got slightly engaged with the whodunnit element of the book; I was approaching smugness and shouting at the amateurs to tell them that they were looking in the wrong place and taking a wee bit too long. It is so frustrating when characters take no notice of my direction and then, WHAM, the twist hits me. The twist that I wasn't looking for. The twist that I had no idea was coming. And yes, it is irritating but very clever, because I now need to read the next book.
Sara Shepard writes for young adults but us older ones can definitely still enjoy her tales.
The Amateur sleuths' interest in crime solving comes from a mixture of places; some are looking for a crowd which will accept their true often hidden selves and others have been forced there through their own personal painful dealings with unsolved crimes. I found the back stories were excellently extracted. Rather than overwhelming the reader with tears and obvious physical demonstrations of sadness, the breadth of feeling allowed and how it was expressed was true to the character's portrayal.
There were a couple of characters that distracted and irritated me. Catherine. There was a hint that she would become multi layered but it did not happen. I wanted to skip past the parts that featured her but kept with it in the hope that she would suddenly become interesting. You can't win them all. Or like them all is more accurate. There was a bit too much pretty in this book - the importance of it, the definition of it. I understand that the definition of the self features strongly in our journey through young adulthood but that is not a reason to pretend that pretty is a moral story. It isn't.
I got slightly engaged with the whodunnit element of the book; I was approaching smugness and shouting at the amateurs to tell them that they were looking in the wrong place and taking a wee bit too long. It is so frustrating when characters take no notice of my direction and then, WHAM, the twist hits me. The twist that I wasn't looking for. The twist that I had no idea was coming. And yes, it is irritating but very clever, because I now need to read the next book.
Sara Shepard writes for young adults but us older ones can definitely still enjoy her tales.
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