This is not her story.
Unless you count the part where I killed her.
Sixteen-year-old Alison has been sectioned in a mental institute for teens, having murdered the most perfect and popular girl at school. But the case is a mystery: no body has been found, and Alison's condition is proving difficult to diagnose. Alison herself can't explain what happened: one minute she was fighting with Tori - the next she disintegrated. Into nothing. But that's impossible. Right?
(sorry for looking so terrible, I just got in from an 8 hour shift that had me up at 3.30am)
This was yet another book I was reluctant to buy, mainly because it was stacked along side all the new clique teenage romance/horror novels. But it was actually rather good! ALOT of plot twists...things that shouldn't be combined together, but somehow it worked and flowed seamlessly. The further into the book I got, the more my eyes grew wide in shock...a few times I exclaimed, 'No! Did they just? What the...?' I don't want to say anymore about the plot twists, as it would spoil half the fun, so I'll stick to the main story, and just say this books genre would be a hard one to pin point.
Which involves a girl (Alison) being locked away in a modern day mental asylum for an event she can't remember involving a girls dissapearance. The book was rather wonderful and dreamy, because the author had cleverly given the main character Synesthesia - a problem in the brain function which makes people taste words, hear colours, see the letters of the alphabets as different colours and see they have personalities. This made for an even more interesting read. Being set in a mental institute you met alot of interesting people, all with different illnesses and mental diseases. Along side these characters, that helped break up Alisons' time in the asylum, there were also her parents, who for me created alot of controversy...one minute I hated them, and the next they weren't so bad. Her mother particularly was a wonderfully fickle character. The author created some really interesting characters which kept us amused and entertained along the way. This poor girl had to deal with alot, and whilst her reactions to all things real were spot on realistic, her reactions to the unexplained and supernatural were perhaps not too well thought out, as she seemed to just take it all into her stride.
Sebastians character was interesting. He was so hard to figure out, I was consistantly trying to make my mind up about him. I liked that he was much more than just a love interest (despite the beauty of Alisons description of him) he was the missing link, and a key concept to the story. It truley felt like reality, with the relationship developing throughout, rather than the author having just thrown in a bit of love for the hell of it.
I would give this book a 7/10. It was wonderful and beautifully written. Held my intrest, so I had finished it in a few hours. But I felt some of it, despite the content, seemed aimed at young teenagers, and did not reach it's true potential, which is why this is rated at a 7 not an 8.
