Initial reaction: I was really surprised how engaged I was throughout this entire narrative. The book somehow missed my radar when it was first released, but I got it on Google Play for $1.99 during one of their sales. I couldn't put this down at all. I loved the format, loved the way it kept me guessing, and the characters were well constructed. I still need to collect my thoughts, but this is looking like a 4 star read.Full review:Edit 1/28/2016: Character name corrected to Kate. Apologies for...

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight is one of those books that parents of teenagers will read and think, could this possibly be happening in my child's life or is it all just hype. "Do you really know whats going on inside your daughter's head" What a brilliant premise for a novel. We have become so advanced in social media and yet so naive to the dangers and consequences of the advancements. Once there was a time when bullying at school might have been confined to the school yard or...

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 at, 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! Th...

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” - Virginia WoolfThis book made me cry. And I really wasn't expecting that.I think the comparisons between Reconstructing Amelia and Gone Girl have done this book a disservice. I know that every mystery/thriller with some unconventional female antics is now compared to Gone Girl - inevitable, really, in a world so focused on the marketing and selling aspect. But Gone Girl (and the books that deserve to be grouped with it) left me shocked...

O-M-G! I'm so glad that I was a teenage girl way before the arrival of the internet. These girlies take bullying to a whole new level!

The premise behind this book was intriguing but I find myself deeply unsatisfied by the end. The format itself was interesting by showing so many different mediums, though at times confusing.Throughout the book, I was interested to know the truth about what happened to Amelia. Did she commit suicide or was it foul play? Were the Magpies involved? Who was really her father? Who is Ben? But in the end I found so many or the answers disappointing that it made the journey feel like a waste as well.O...

Did high school sophomore Amelia jump off of the school's roof? Or was she pushed? Told through the viewpoints of Amelia, her Mom Kate, Facebook posts, text messages and a hurtful high school blog, this book had many twists and turns that I never saw coming..

Time to deconstruct Reconstructing Amelia. I think I must have enjoyed this book. After all, I never considered not finishing it. So it kept me engaged. I had no problems switching from Amelia to Kate and back to Amelia. And I had no problems reading current time and 1997. I wanted to know the whole backstory.This was not, however, a perfect book. I really objected to how Lew the Lieutenant let Kate get so deeply involved in the investigation. She was the one poring over what was on Amelia's pho...

Here are my pervasive thoughts as I read this book:1 - Gillian Flynn, you should be offended within every inch of your life.2 - I can see how a puppet show could be entertaining, but not when all you see is the marionette pulling the strings and3 - I am coining a new term - Offensive Apologetics - to encapsulate much - but by no means all - of what is wrong with this book.To address 1 - Ms. Flynn penned a successful hit entitled Gone Girl which, while gimmicky and over the top, was engaging and

This was a fantastic debut novel!! Kept me engrossed and turning the pages. I subtracted a star because unfortunately I didn’t love the ending, I felt there was a bit more potential there but still a great book, overall. Would recommend!

*3.5 Stars• Gripping and mysterious build-up • Intriguing plot• Wonderfully composed characters • Decent conclusion, but wasn't as blown away as I'd hoped*Would recommend*

3.5 stars / Recommend / fast, easy read / enjoyed the characters and the story / suspected what actually happened to Amelia and a few other mysteries / was happy with the ending / no real wow factor for me but all in all it was a very good read

This book was one of the biggest disappointments I've read in a long time. I like mysteries, I like books about teenagers, I like books that incorporate different kinds of media (e-mails, texts, blog posts, etc.), and I think the book had a good premise: a seemingly-happy fifteen year old girl flings herself off the roof of her fancy, private school, and her mother is determined to figure out why. But it all goes downhill from there.Amelia is the cliche of the Perfect High School Daughter: she i...

This book. This. Fucking. Book. You see all those other reviews talking about how it was unputdownable, and how they never believed something so cliche before this book? You know how you’re rolling your eyes right now at those comments? Stop it. They are all true. This book handily usurped Gone Girl as the best book I have read in the past year. Make no mistake, however, this book is absolutely heartwrenching in so many ways I cannot describe absent spoilers.This book is many things, which makes...

I wanted to like this, but the writing is really bad. Really bad. Really, really, really bad. Plus, some of the plot points simply made no sense. There are certain things you can suspend your disbelief to and that’s fine and normal when it comes to any form of fiction, as long as it makes sense in their world the author created, but there is a limit. There’s no way a detective would bring the mother of a victim along with him to interview witnesses and get statements. It….. No, just no.Unless, h...

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how fast the current’s moving until you’re headed over a waterfall.On one level, Reconstructing Amelia is a mystery. Everyone—even her heartbroken mother Kate—believes the party line story that fifteen-year-old Amelia Baron jumped to her death from the roof of her elite private school after getting caught cheating on an assignment. But when Kate gets an anonymous text a few weeks later reading “She didn’t jump,” Kate convinces a police detective to reopen the investig...

I am very confused and i do not know how to review this book, surely it was a reading that I devoured in a few days and that really it hooked me a lot..At the same time, it all seemed to me too much exaggerated and in some cases even grotesque...I immediately say that Amelia seemed to me (sorry I know, she was 15 years old,) a poor fool for how she is described by the author....It was not a character that involved me emotionally and I certainly had no desire to cheer for her, and no way to be wo...

Reconstructing Amelia is a debut novel by Kimberly McCreight, and, my gosh, is it good. In the beginning of the novel readers meet Kate, a single mother and successful lawyer who struggles daily with determining which role is more important. Her daughter, Amelia, is a bright, creative, thoughtful and focused high school student. Despite Kate’s “crushing work hours, she knew her daughter. Really knew her,” she assures herself. But the closeness of their bond is called to question when Kate receiv...

Good lord this book is awful. It reads like a novelization of a particularly insipid Lifetime movie. I can't even fathom how this dreck got published. This book is a disaster in all respects. The characters are paper thin and uniformly obnoxious. They are each imbued with exactly one personality trait that is hammered into the ground ("mom works!" "Daughter reads" "boy crazy best friend"). The characters have no interior lives. None of these characters feel like people. They are some of the most...

A glowing review in Entertainment Weekly suggested this book is the must-read thriller of 2013, the next Gone Girl. Based on that review, and bored by the last book I finished, I was eager to read this one. But the glowing review left me disappointed. Don't get me wrong - this is a fun, engaging thriller that kept me reading. I finished it in about a day and a half. But I would hardly rave about it. Kate, a single mother in her late 30s, is a junior partner in a large NY law firm, logging in the...