i get a little bit bigger, but then i'll admit i'm just the same as i was.

Amelia Anne is Dead And Gone by Kat Rosenfield ★★★★★

Becca has always been a girl who makes plans, and her plan is to escape the godforsaken town of Bridgeton. But when on the night of her graduation, her boyfriend James breaks her heart and a body of a mysterious girl is found on the side of the road, everything changes. Becca lies awake at night, wondering who is the girl, how did she end up here, who was the person she saw last, the person who took her life. Beccas obsession with the girl paralyzes her and for the first time in her life she doesn't know how to move forward. Then things start to unravel towards the horrifying truth of the death of Amelia Anne.

Kat Rosenfields writing is lushious, heavy and lyrical. The death of Amelia Anne creates a Twin Peaks-esque atmospehre that sets over the town like a thick fog. The book follows Beccas last summer in Bridgeton side by side with the last day of Amelias life. We get to know the small town through Beccas eyes, the secret short cuts, the things everybody just know, like the fact that there is a red Ford tractor hidden in the water at the south end of Silver Lake. Kat Rosenfields way of describing a small town life is spot on.



Amelia Anne is Dead And Gone is a dark and mysterious story told so beautifully it sends shivers down your spine and tears into your eyes just for the sake of words combined so perfectly together. I have never read an epilogue so beautifully written than the one in this book. It's not the most original and unexpected story plot wise, but it's so compellingly written you just want to keep reading it forever, and when it's done, read it again.

"An anonymous death in a small town, that's a different thing. It makes people uneasy. They stop gossiping, talk only with trusted friends, or - realizing that nobody can truly be trusted - they don't talk at all. Instead of settling in the streets or running throught the municipal sewer system, murder moves inside. It becomes internalized. It seeps around the corners of locked front doors. It creeps into people's bedrooms. It runs in their veins.  People sit on their porches, they smoke, they look with  narrowed eyes down the darkened streets and into their neighbors' windows. Inside, murder tiptoes up the back stairs and hides behind a bedroom door. The people, alone on their porches or gathered quietly around the kitchen table, consider the unknowns. They form theories. They wait for information. And when they go inside, upstairs, when the lights go out and they lie, wakeful, in their beds, they wonder if everything has changed."