Fiction for Teens

A month after a terrible flood took her ex-boyfriend Caleb’s life, Jessa is asked by Caleb’s mother to tidy their house to prepare them for moving. As she begins to sort his belongings, she learns more and more about the boy she thought she knew. As the memories overwhelm her, she begins to piece together his story, until she’s left with a picture that is unrecognisable – what exactly happened on that bridge, and was it his fault?

From the first couple of pages, I loved Miranda’s writing style – it described the emotion of the characters and the grief they were experiencing really well. In particular, Caleb’s Mother’s dislike for Jessa really came across, and added to a sense of tension between the characters, which made me even more eager to uncover the clues surrounding Caleb’s death.

The flashbacks reminded me a little of the flashbacks in If I Stay – slowly they allow the reader to understand how their relationship developed over the two years they have known one another, and as a result hint the indirect and direct causes of the events that unfold. This continues for the majority of the book, until significant breakthroughs in the mystery mean that the pace really picks up. The plot twists at the end are really unexpected, but demonstrate that anything could have been possible. It did not disappoint.

In the back of my copy was a short excerpt from the beginning of The Safest Lies, another novel by Miranda. I was drawn in immediately, so I will be adding this to my TBR list!