Book Review: Girl in Snow

Girl in Snow

by: Danya Kukafka

Publication Date: August 1, 2017
Finished on: July 27, 2017
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Disclaimer: Special thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.  All thoughts and opinions expressed below are my own.

"...he thought of how somewhere out there, beyond this festering town, other people had killed.  He wondered what they killed for.  Compulsion, maybe.  Or like in the movies: people killed for sex, or for money."

Synopsis:
The golden girl and high school freshman, Lucinda Hayes, is found dead on the middle school carousal.  Who did it and why?  We are introduced to a cast of suspects: Cameron (her quirky stalker), Jade (her former "friend" who hates her), her family, and and her ex-boyfriend Zap (he's the ex and needs no other motive).  Was it possibly an accident?  And does the murderer even remember that he/she did it?

"How do you explain the badness inside you?"

This novel is told from multiple perspectives and alternates between Russ (police officer called to the murder scene), Jade (her ex-friend/frenemey), and Cameron (the potential stalker)'s points of view.  None are the most reliable of narrators and nor the most lovable characters, but they are well-written and become fully developed over the course of the book.  People that I initially hated, I ended up loving by the end of the novel.  And don't worry readers, you will find out exactly what happened by the end of the book.

(my hotel bed)

"Doesn't matter who you are; in a hotel, you become no one and everyone, all at once."

Review:
Without question, Danya Kukafka is a talented writer.  I was constantly highlighting different section of the text and reflecting on just how perfect certain passages were.  Bravo!

"I thought maybe I'd feel light, or like a better person.  In reality, I am only myself."

Girl in Snow tells many stories.  It tells the story of Russ, who doesn't quite realize why he is unhappy or what he needs to do to get his life back on track.  It tells the story of Cameron, who obviously has some sort of mental illness, but is trying to fit in with his peers.  It tells the story of Jade, the most self-aware teenager I've ever read.  Jade is the girl that I wish I could go back to high school to be best friends with.  This is a story of friendships and love and that grey area in between the two.

"I keep trying to distill the difference between friendship and love - in an effort to figure out how you can lose both at once - but maybe it doesn't matter.  It was love.  It was there.  It was enough."

I reached out to the author, Danya Kukafka, on Instagram to find out more about how she wrote the character Cameron.  It seemed obvious to me that Cameron has a mental illness, but I couldn't quite settle myself on what diagnosis.  Here is what she had to say:

"I made sure to keep his mental illness vague, and specific to him.  I wanted to be careful not to stigmatize -- none of us are "normal.""

Thank you so much, Danya, for responding to my request for more information!  Even her answer was perfectly worded, just like her novel!

"You should know - you're the hero of this story."

Yes, this book has a hero.  And yes, this book has at least one villain.  Personally, I never guessed the murderer.  I think I was so totally enraptured by the writing that I was caught off guard when we found out what had happened.  I was involved with the character development and by the time the murderer was revealed, I felt like it no longer mattered to the me.

Overall, I rate this 4 very high stars out of 5.  I think had I been in a different mindset, it would have rated even higher.  This read as a character-driven novel and I was anticipating something in the mystery/thriller/suspense genre.  Yes, there was a murder and we are set along the course to find out who did it, but this book is all about the characters with a side-plot of murder.  If you come to this book with the right kind of reading in mind, I think this could easily be a favorite read.


More quotes I adore from Girl in Snow:
You shouldn't think so much about sin...it'll tear you up for no reason at all."

"What do you want?  I try to ask myself, because I think it might be over.  I want to see New York.  I want to write something like lava, like gravity.  There are things beyond the border of Broomsville, and I want to know how they taste."

"It's the golden hour now.  The sun looks like melted sugar.  Irises grow more layers.  Purple mountain majesties."