Impressive debut, but I didn't care for the complicated romantic drama

I've long been looking for an elusive type of YA Mystery.... that is- one that I love and can't put down!! Far From You wasn't EXACTLY what I've been wanting, but we're getting close people... really close!! This book started out slow and a little confusing. The timeline bounces around all over the place. We go from now (post rehab), to post accident (pill addiction problem), to after kicking the pills (but before Mina's death), to the day of the murder, to the aftermath of the murder, to way way back before anything happened at all. Take the complicated nature of a lot of the relationships thrown in with the alternating timeline chapters, and my head was spinning a little trying to just understand what was happening.

About 1/3 of the way through, the set-up was complete and the actual mystery of why Mina was killed started to get going. THAT'S when I started getting into this book. Unraveling what happened to "wannabe reporter" Mina involved another unsolved crime, and it was page-turning as hell. I had many suspects, and while I did eventually figure part of it out, I was still surprised in the end, which is good!! I love a surprise twist!

So this wasn't the perfect YA Mystery that I've been hunting, and here's why: The slow/confusing start coupled with the fact that I wasn't in love with the romantical aspects in the book. I thought it added another layer of confusion to the plot that wasn't needed. I felt the mystery and drug addiction aspects were plenty to keep the story interesting without allllll this other drama going on. I also really wanted the book to end about 15 pages before it did. I'm not actually sure what was gained in those last pages, but I read an ARC, so maybe it was cut??? Once the mystery is solved and the reader finds out if main characters were/weren't okay, that should be the end. I feel like beyond that, I am able to envision futures for these people without it all being spelled out.

OVERALL: A very good and complicated YA Mystery. This wasn't THE YA Mystery that I've been looking for, but I still found it page-turning, unique, and twisty. I would have preferred less of the romance aspects and more of the mysteries, and I also felt it dragged at the end, but overall a solid debut.

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Someone needs to make this book into a movie, is what I’m going to start with.

If you look this book up online, you’ll immediately find that it has a pretty good rating on Goodreads. I don’t blame them, really – I would have given it a very high rating myself too! I started reading this on Christmas Eve Eve, and finished it on the 27th of December, literally holding myself awake on some nights with the promise of ‘just one more chapter’. It helps that this book is written in a style that mirrors my own writing style, but what really grabbed me what was the story line.

Every good book, I believe, starts in media res. No good book starts you in the beginning and keeps you going from there, building up the story. There are some good books that do that, but those are usually the ones that need volumes upon volumes to tell you the story, building it up as it goes along. If we’re talking about a one-novel affair here, then the story never starts in the beginning, but right in the middle of the action, where it’s most likely to grab your attention.

This story starts with our main character, Sophie, telling us about how she’s almost died twice. The first time, she was in a car accident that left her crippled for life. The second time, she witnessed her best friend killed by a lone gunman. Sophie is a drug addict, who has been addicted to pain killers since the accident that left her crippled and unable to walk without a limp (and, in extreme cases, without a cane). She is clean, and finds herself counting the hours since the last time she had a hit of Oxy, convincing herself that she’s made too much progress to regress into the vicious cycle now. But Sophie’s best friend, Mina, was killed right in front of her, and everybody thinks that it’s Sophie fault, as Sophie was found at the scene of the crime with pills in her jacket pocket. Everybody seems to think that she took Mina with her to buy drugs, and the drug deal went wrong, resulting in Mina’s death. Nobody will believe that Sophie had been clean for six months prior to Mina getting killed, and that Mina would never let her buy drugs and start the cycle all over again. And so, the minute that Sophie leaves rehab, she’s on a quest to find out who really killed her best friend, and why.

This story is 70% murder mystery, 20% drug addiction, and 10% grief. Sophie never had the time to properly grieve the death of her best friend, and has trouble accepting that she’s gone forever. The story, completely told through first person POV, gives us flashbacks into Sophie’s friendship with Mina, and how it grew and became the strong bond it is when the story picks up. Sophie and Mina’s friendship is a pure spectacle of teenage love – two friends who rely on each other so completely, who have no idea what they’d do without the other, and who are finally faced with the unthinkable when one of them dies and they finally have to do what they’ve dreaded the most. Sophie’s emotions and anger over Mina’s death are so real that it’s very hard to not feel some kind of emotion while reading this book.

What I liked about this book as well is the way that Sharpe had me guessing up until the end about who the murderer was. I went through various different answers in my head before finally reaching the end, and by the time it was revealed, I found myself saying ‘This is fucked up’ to myself quite a bit as I finished the book. The only part of the Goodreads reviews that I disagree with, in fact, are that the ending was predictable, which it isn’t. I was expecting somebody completely different to be the murderer, not the person it turned out to be.

All in all, I give this book a final rating of 5/5. It’s got a brilliant story line, one that makes you confront your worst nightmare if you had to place you and your best friend as Sophie and Mina. It also includes subtle hints at romance that aren’t the ‘be all, end all’ of the story, which is nice. And, like I said, the ending is rather unpredictable! ( )

Tess Sharpe's characters aren't perfect, which makes her books so enjoyable. I had a hard time putting down the book to do other stuff, because I was really invested in what was happening. ( )

“I give him the only thing I can: the cold, hard truth. The one that’ll rewrite every memory he has—of him and me, her and me, the two of them, all three of us: “It’ll always be Mina.”

This is a lovely and painful story of loss, recovery and revenge. Told in a juxtaposition of past and present this novel delves into Sophie’s tragic loss of her best friend Mina who was murdered right in front of her one night out in the woods. Spurned by the need for revenge and trying to unravel the mystery of who killed her Sophie begins to piece together the truth of that night.

What I loved:
-It catches your attention immediately!
-The perfect balance of past and present. Each chapter switched between the two, with the present diving into a mystery while the past told us why we should care. It was perfect because it kept up a quick intriguing pace while also not drowning us in an information dump explaining what led up to this. By the end I was so invested in Sophie’s and Mina’s story that it made Mina’s death all the more heartbreaking.
-Bisexual main character. I’m a sucker for representation so you know I had to mention it! Plus, Sophie and Mina loved each other so much and that just needs to be said even if it makes me want to cry. ( )

Four stars because I finally, finally saw myself in a book. Plot and characterwise, it was horrid and deserved a scathing, one-star review, but--I'm in a book. I wrote on Goodreads:
I cried because I finally saw myself. The main character walks like me.
Her friends help her. I cried. My friends never did when I was her age. I know how to ask for the accommodations I need, in ways that people understand, as an adult. It took -years- to figure this out. I grew up in an ableist household, and I live in an ableist society.
Her parents and she argue a ton and I laughed. I argued often with my ableist parents about my physical therapy--parts of it hurt. I told them this, and they made me do the "it hurts" parts extra, and yelled at me.

This book is not a murder mystery. It's a coming-of-age, but the author knew it wouldn't sell if she just left it as that. The main character's disability is due to a car accident. Mine is not. But it fit. It so, so fit. I finally saw me.
The book was well-written, and I was so fixated on seeing myself that I ignored what else the book was about. I don't care. ( )