Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight (Details)
Book Title: Reconstructing Amelia
Book Author: Kimberly McCreight
Date Published: April 2, 2013
Number Of Pages: 400
My Rating: ★★★
Find It On: Amazon | GoodReads
Jump to: Reconstructing Amelia (Summary) | Reconstructing Amelia (Book Review) | Discussion
Reconstructing Amelia (Summary)
Reconstructing Amelia is every parent’s worst nightmare. Kate, a hard-working single mother, receives a phone call saying that her daughter, Amelia, was caught cheating. Rushing from her office, she arrives at the school only to find that Amelia is dead. Police say that her daughter’s death was a suicide.
Grieving, Kate tries to understand why her gifted, well-behaved daughter would have gone to such an extreme. Then the texts start appearing on her phone. “Amelia didn’t jump.”
Working with police to uncover the mystery of her daughter’s death, Kate launches into an investigation of the past few months of Amelia’s life. She discovers that there was much more to Amelia than she knew. Facebook messages, texts, emails, and mysterious websites reveal that Amelia was a part of a secret club of mean, powerful girls.
Reconstructing Amelia (Book Review)
Although this book is labeled General Fiction, I believe it is more of a Young Adult Fiction. Chapters go back and forth between Kate’s current life (written in the third person) and Amelia’s past few months (written from the first person POV of Amelia).
I enjoyed reading about what happened in Amelia’s life from her own point of view. Being able to see what Amelia did from Kate’s point wouldn’t have been enough. Through Amelia’s eyes, we get to read more about what she thought about her mother, her best friends, boys, teachers, and other classmates. We understood Amelia’s decision to join a secret group and why she would go to such lengths to protect their secrets.
Kate’s storyline was more of a disappointment for me. I felt that the author didn’t put in enough time to focus on her grief. Also, Kate’s work with the detective on the case was too far-reaching. Kate was brought along to every interview and asked her own questions to witnesses. There’s no way this would have happened in real life. I know that it added something to the storyline, but I think it would have been more realistic if Kate had done this on her own. While I liked the character of Detective Lew, he was only there as a filler and could have been left out entirely.
Discussion
I’m so glad that I didn’t go to high school during the age of social media. The ways that kids can bully each other these days is terrifying and the fact that my own kids are growing up during this age of technology scares me. It is the main reason why I wanted to read this book.
