January 6, 2014
Teenage Ember Leferrier remembers very little of the car accident that left her in the hospital for eight months. Now, as she returns to school, she begins to remember different things about the night and weeks leading up to the crash. However, she must work to determine which of her friends and family are lying to her as she tries to find the truth. Narrator Craden turns in a performance that is guaranteed to maintain listener attention. She reads with a softer tone during Ember’s scared and vulnerable moments, and this contrasts well with the tone she uses during more dynamic passages. Not all of voices Craden lends the characters match up perfectly, but she hits the mark well with the major players. Ages 12-up. A Knopf hardcover.
September 30, 2013
Piecing together a teen’s forgotten past is the object of this mesmerizing romance set in the aftermath of a horrific car accident. The heroine, Ember Leferrier, who has suffered multiple injuries as well as amnesia, comes home from the hospital to family and friends who seem relieved that she’s back to her “real” self. Slowly, Ember gathers that she was not acting normally during the weeks before the accident and that a strange boy was also in the car, and didn’t survive. Mirroring the eerie atmosphere of Griffin’s Tighter, the novel traces Ember’s flashes of memory that draw her from her Brooklyn home to a darker place, where she meets and falls in love with a young artist. Keeping their relationship private causes Ember to act secretively, as she did before her accident, but if she can sort out her impulses to venture outside her safety zone, she might find the key to her memory loss. Astute readers may put together the puzzle before Ember does, but sorting hallucinations from reality is an intriguing and chilling mental exercise. Ages 12–up.