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Dec 02, 2014KateHillier rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Not my usual wheel house but that is the point of reading book club books. This is my first novel by this author and I can't help but be reminded by the YA Lurlene McDaniel books I read as a teenager. The writing was very similar but I think much cleaner in the latter's case. May have something to do with the length. The book opens with Josie Cormier hoarding pills as a 'just in case' measure to kill herself, establishes that she is popular but feels/knows she is faking her way through the upper echelons of her small town high school. Her mother, a superiour court judge sees her in a completely different way or not at all depending on who you ask. Then there is a shooting at Josie's high school and the case is going to end up on Judge Cormier's docket. You think that this is going to be a courtroom drama but it really is not. The novel jumps back and forth between the far past (as in Josie's birth and conception) and the present with the past eating up far more of the book than the actual trial. I understand that the relationships between the students at the high school, the parents, and the town itself, are all important in understanding the tragedy but I found it more than a little confusing at points and some detours could have been curbed or cut. All my sympathies were with the children in this novel, of course. Especially when it came to bullying aspects of the book. There was plenty of food for thought there, for the purposes of the story and for personal reflection, but it still came off as a bit too heavy on the 'after school special' vibe for me.