Reconstructing Amelia | Book Review

Reconstructing Amelia

Written by: Kimberly McCreight

Number of Pages: 382

Average Rating: 3.82/5 stars

My Rating: 4/5 stars

Published: April 2013

Read in September 2017

Summary According to Goodreads

Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.

Kate can’t believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who’s never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate’s faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead.

Seemingly unable to cope with what she’d done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school’s roof in an act of “spontaneous” suicide. At least that’s the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:

She didn’t jump.

Sifting through Amelia’s emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall’s roof that day - and why she died.

My Thoughts 

This novel was such a roller coaster. At some points I was sure I would give it five stars, and at other times it was sitting at a three. Considering this is a debut novel, I am very impressed with how well she managed to keep the pacing and suspense. It was also written in a way that could lead it to be classified as either adult or young adult, which I think makes it a good transition novel for readers. 

The plot was captivating, I love thrillers, and I really enjoyed how this was told in different perspectives and writing styles. It was interesting to go back and forth between perspectives, but also across different periods of Kate’s life. We meet many different characters along the way, but almost everyone played a role in the outcome of Amelia’s death. Since the reader is given clues, as well as the text messages, Facebook posts, etc., it makes it feel as though you are a part of the investigation. I think telling a story in this format really opens some doors about the struggles a teen can go through in this new digital age. It was a very powerful plot, from the beginning to the end.

As I said earlier, there were a lot of characters in this novel - some that I liked more than others. Amelia was your typical fifteen-year-old teenager, even if she sometimes seemed older than she was. Throughout the novel her personality changed, and not always for the better. She got mixed up with the wrong group of friends, and she lost who she was for a while. Kate was an interesting woman to read, as she seemed to become more involved in Amelia’s life only after she was dead. She claimed they had this great, open relationship, but also acknowledged that she worked a lot and often didn’t see Amelia during the week. Amelia’s best friend, Sylvia, might have been my favourite character to read. She was very believable, if not a little bit exaggerated. Since this is a novel about the investigation of a potential murder, it was a very character-driven story which I think Kimberly McCreight did very well. 

One of the issues that I had with this novel was the fact that Kate was almost leading the investigation. Granted I am not employed in a criminal justice occupation, I just found it very hard to believe that a Lieutenant would take the mother of the victim to his suspect’s interviews and such. Seems like a conflict of interest in my opinion. 

Overall, I enjoyed this novel and will likely pick up another work of hers. I got through this very quickly, by listening to the audiobook during a stock shift at work. It was captivating listening to this, and I didn’t want it to end! If you enjoy murder-mystery and thriller novels, I would recommend you check this one out!