Me on Rosebush

Title: Rosebush
Author: Michele Jaffe
Release Date: December 14, 2010
Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin imprint)
Pages: 326 (Hardcover)

Reading this was like reading a whodunit YA psycho thriller in a race against time to figure out who the villain is before the heroine dies a gruesome and revenge-filled death. A bit dark, but still attention-grabbing.

Jane is one of the popular girls. She's got awesome friends, a sweet boyfriend. Life is great, with the possible exception of her distant mother and possibly mobster boyfriend/fiancé, but other than that everything's working out for her.

Then she's found, half alive, in a rosebush after being hit by a car.

Jane's story was very interesting, and rather emotional. She comes to in a hospital after being at a party with her friends, discovers she can't move, can't talk, can't remember anything. She's left to piece together her lost hours in snatches of conversation with friends and snippits of vague memories that come to her as someone continues to call her and threaten her. Someone wants her dead, wants her to suffer, and Jane's freaking out.

I liked the path the book took as it told Jane's story from the party to the hospital and her struggle to work out how her life changed in a few late-night hours. It sort of reminded me of an Agatha Christie story, or maybe a TV movie version of one of her stories. You see the beginning, you see the end, and you're left to figure out with Poirot or Miss Marple, or Jane, who did it and why.

I'm unsure on the flashback chapters. I understand that the author included them as insights into Jane's character and to draw similarities to her current situation, but I felt they drew me away from Jane in the hospital a bit.

Other than that, I found the book to be pretty good. It's an interesting YA contemporary mystery. I didn't figure out who'd done it until Jane did, which might say something about me. ;)