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Synopsis:

It was the perfect trip… until it wasn’t.

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital room, leg in a cast, stitches in her face and a big blank canvas where the last six weeks should be. She discovers she was involved in a fatal car accident while on a school trip in Italy. A trip she doesn’t even remember taking. She was jetted home by her affluent father in order to receive quality care. Care that includes a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident…wasn’t an accident.

As the accident makes national headlines, Jill finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. It doesn’t help that the media is portraying her as a sociopath who killed her bubbly best friend, Simone, in a jealous rage. With the evidence mounting against her, there’s only one thing Jill knows for sure: She would never hurt Simone. But what really happened? Questioning who she can trust and what she’s capable of, Jill desperately tries to piece together the events of the past six weeks before she loses her thin hold on her once-perfect life.

Review:

This book was hard to get through, and if I would not have been listening to it as an audiobook, I think it would have become my first DNF’d book. I found it full of sterotypes, it was flat, it was boring.

So, what was it about?

It’s about a girl named Jill, who finds herself in a hospital after an accident during her trip in Italy. Not only can she not remember the accident itself, she cannot remember anything from the past six weeks—all the time that she was on the trip. After the accident, she was quickly flown back to the US for care. Recuperating isn’t the only thing Jill has to do though, for she has to deal with a lawyers, the police, and the press.

Why? Because Jill wasn’t the only one in the car that night. She was with her best friend Simone, who was killed in the accident, and now the majority of the media is painting her as a girl who purposefully murdered her friend. The book revolves around Jill trying to put together the evidence and find out what really happened. Is she the kind of person who really would have done such a thing?

This book had potential, but potential isn’t enough. The idea was interesting, but everything fell so flat that I could not be drawn into the story. There was a mystery, sure. I was maybe, mildly, curious. But I wasn’t invested in it or the characters.

First of all, Jill is a rich girl. And of course, because she’s rich, the author went, “let’s have her parents be divorced, and her dad needs to be a jerk because otherwise we can’t pity her”. Nope. Still didn’t pity her. Throughout the story I can only see her as stuck up and entitled, she goes on and on about how she’s such a good person and would never have killed Simone—without making me actually feel any of her desperation.

Then, of course, the foreign police are painted as stupid and aggressive. They don’t know the proper procedures. They’re only out to get Jill and drag her off to jail to make her suffer. They don’t actually want to solve the mystery because, you know, they want the truth.

And Jill’s roommate in the hospital? Of course, for the contrast, she’s the poor shady colored girl who ended up in the hospital because of her abusive boyfriend. But guess what? Beyond that callous exterior, she has a kind heart. Aww, I haven’t heard that one before.

Before I go any further, don’t get me wrong. These may be stereotypes, but they wouldn’t have bothered me as much if the author would have done something with them to make them more interesting and more in depth. I think I read a lot of books with that “hard exterior, kind interior”, but that’s not all they are.

Another thing, that may seem little to some people, but Jill’s nurses? Two were Asian, and therefore, of course, they had to speak in broken English. That bugged me.

On to the plot, which I’m not going to get too much into because of spoilers. It is set entirely in the hospital, with police reports, witness statements, and news articles in between to give you an idea of what is happening outside. Basically, the whole thing is watching each person repeat a small variation of two things: “Jill is perfect and good” and “Jill is terrible and evil”.

It went on and on and on.

The ending, too, fell flat, because I had not developed enough of an attachment to Jill for the conclusion to seem realistic and satisfying.

That’s it, I guess. If you did read this and enjoy it, by no means am I trying to put you down for liking it. We probably have different tastes. Maybe you saw something in it that I missed, and I’m glad you found the book worth your time. But these are my thoughts.