reading challenge

READING CHALLENGE

WELCOME BOOK LOVERS

Thanks for stopping by. My name is Cyndi and each week, myself and my two best book friends forever Ann and Karen jointly blog together on Book Club Thursday (BCT). To learn all about BCT please click here

If you're a regular reader, you are going to see some fresh changes to each of our BCT blogs for 2017. We are very excited and hope you will participate in our events. 

This week we have:

Today's BCT are when each of us can read any book we want as long as it fits a theme from one of our Reading Challenge lists.

This week I picked a book from this list (my choice is in RED ) 

TRICKY

Read a book published before 2010

Read a book with a wedding

Read a book published in the month (not year) you were born

Working Girls  

Read a book set in your home state

Read a book that includes nature on the cover

Read a book with a cover that you really don’t like (ugly)

Read a book you once gave up on

Read a book with a clever title

Read a book that takes place in Winter

Read a book that includes a Holiday

Read a book set in/around New Orleans

Read a book with a “Food” word in the title

Read a book with a seasonal word in the title

“From its startling opening line right through to its stunning conclusion, Girl in Snow is a perfectly paced and tautly plotted thriller. Danya Kukafka’s misfit characters are richly drawn, her prose is both elegant and eerie—this is an incredibly accomplished debut.” —Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water 

WHO ARE YOU WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING?

When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched—not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters—Cameron, Jade, and Russ—must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth, or both. In crystalline prose, Danya Kukafka offers a brilliant exploration of identity and of the razor-sharp line between love and obsession, between watching and seeing, between truth and memory.

Compulsively readable and powerfully moving, Girl in Snow offers an unforgettable reading experience and introduces a singular new talent in Danya Kukafka.

Like some if not many of my "Challenge" books, I don't necessarily pick a book to fit a challenge. 

Such was the case with this title. I actually came upon it by chance when toying around with an email sent by the publisher. The striking cover and title more than caught my eye and after checking out what the book was about and reading the first sentence I was hooked. And yes, it is quite an opening sentence. 

I decided to use the book for the word SNOW in the title (read a book with a seasonal word in the title).  

Now - on to the review- 

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

And I'll start off by saying I'm including SPOILERS below, especially one concerning the killer - I don't say it who it is but rather who it isn't. I'll warn you before I reveal and it's actually at the very end of my review. 

I found Girl in Snow to be beautifully and hauntingly written. Seriously. This book reached in and grabbed me - STUNNED me, leaving me numb when I was finished. It's that powerful of a read on so many levels and it rubbed me raw. 

At the core this book revolves around three major characters: 

Cameron, Jade and Russ

It's told in third person POV regarding Cameron and Russ, and first person POV from Jade. It totally works. 

There's such a brutal honesty to the way these characters are completely broken open. It's not just the death/murder of Lucinda that does it to them either. 

In fact although that ties them together (the murder), there are also a bigger pictures at play here. 

The fact is that as characters Cameron, Jade and Russ remind us that life - from the ugly, painful and yes, even the beautiful and fragile parts- makes us all human. 

Ms. Kukafka writes in her acknowledgements that she is humbled by us the readers, however it is us that is humbled if not awed by her. I'm a total fan girl. 

REVEAL TIME

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The killer is NOT one of the three. 

And although I suspected as much up front I didn't completely see where the book  was going to end up regarding the killer.  I will add that I knew fairly quickly that Lucinda's ballerina figurine played into it/was connected. 

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Ann@Romancing the Readers

Karen@The Many Faces of Romance

AUGUST 31ST: REVIEW DAY