Golden Review

Author: Jessi Kirby
Title: Golden
Published: 05/14/2013
Good Reads-
Seventeen-year-old Parker Frost has never taken the road less traveled. Valedictorian and quintessential good girl, she’s about to graduate high school without ever having kissed her crush or broken the rules. So when fate drops a clue in her lap—one that might be the key to unraveling a town mystery—she decides to take a chance.

Julianna Farnetti and Shane Cruz are remembered as the golden couple of Summit Lakes High—perfect in every way, meant to be together forever. But Julianna’s journal tells a different story—one of doubts about Shane and a forbidden romance with an older, artistic guy. These are the secrets that were swept away with her the night that Shane’s jeep plunged into an icy river, leaving behind a grieving town and no bodies to bury.

Reading Julianna’s journal gives Parker the courage to start to really live—and it also gives her reasons to question what really happened the night of the accident. Armed with clues from the past, Parker enlists the help of her best friend, Kat, and Trevor, her longtime crush, to track down some leads. The mystery ends up taking Parker places that she never could have imagined. And she soon finds that taking the road less traveled makes all the difference.

Review:

Okay the cover has absolutely nothing to do with this book what so ever and I kinda hate it. Yep I hate this cover because this is the type of book that could have the most amazing cover to go alongside the story and everything would make so much sense and it would just be so beautiful but it’s not and here we have this cover. I think a better cover would’ve made this more popular, just saying. Now before I go into a frenzy about all my feelings on this book let me sum up what happens.

Parker is a senior who’s got her whole life planned out for her. She’s spent her whole life getting perfect grades and going the extra mile so she can get a scholarship get into the college of her dreams, and work towards Med school. She’s done everything she’s supposed to, and never even thought to question what life would be like if she was more like her best friend Kat who was always taking chances. So during her senior year she decides to take a chance, she finds and steals a journal that belonged to the town’s golden girl ten years ago, Juliana Farnetti. Everyone knows that Juliana along with her perfect boyfriend Shane Cruz died in a car crash a late winter night ten years ago, but when Parker reads the journal from when Juliana was 17, things take an unexpected twist.

Now what’s more creepy than reading a dead girls journal when you should be writing a speech for scholarship named after said girl? Well, finding out all her dirty secrets would be creepy, and connecting them to the very much living people in her town. And if you’re from a small town, you can totally understand Parker’s position, everyone knows who you are one way or another, and no matter what you do, your parents are going to find out in the end.  So Parker runs with what she’s got and makes a rash decision that has her questioning everything she thought her life was.

I liked this book, I liked it a lot. I wasn’t sure about it, and it took me a bit to get into, I barely stopped while I was reading it. But something about it I didn’t like, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is I didn’t like about it. I think, besides the unknown thing, I didn’t like how this book played out. In the beginning it’s a lot about the things that lead up to what makes Parker do something bold, and then when she’s actually doing it, and the after effects are sorta rushed. I would’ve like to read more about what happened after she did what she did, rather than her building up to doing it. If that makes any sense.  I also would’ve loved for it to have been more a mystery, things kinda all connected in the end and it was like “BOOM!” magic. No sleuthing involved, everything was always there, she just needed to put it together.

Overall I really liked this book, and I hate the cover it doesn’t do it justice. I think a lot of people will love Golden if they give it a chance. So on the rating scale it scores a 4.5 for me!