United By Pop received a free copy of Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are our own.
Title: Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee
Author: Mary G. Thompson
Purchase: Available in the UK and the US
Overall rating: 3.5/5
Great for: fans of Megan Abbott and Robin Wasserman
Themes: contemporary, young adult, coming-of-age, thriller, mystery, abduction.
Review: Cousins, Amy MacArthur and Dee Springfield, were abducted whilst playing by a river near their home. Six years later, one of them has returned. But the girl who has returned isn’t the same as the girl who went away.
The eerie and atmospheric qualities of this thriller made this a one-sitting book. There were too many turns to the narrative and too many clues to decipher for this not to have dominated my day! Hunting for the truth became the reader’s main objective, whilst reading this, as our protagonist proved an unreliable one. This is a favourite literary tactic of mine and Thompson deployed it expertly.
Truth is uncovered and unearthed slowly and this heightened the tension of the book, but slowed the pace of it considerably. It differs from other thrillers I have read, in that respect. I enjoyed the drawn-out suspense as it allowed for the characters to fully develop. I felt my affinity with them was heightened and I became more emotionally strung as the story progressed.
What this pace did not allow was for a great progression of character or plot to occur. Much of the events transpired before the opening of the narrative and is told back to the reader in a series of flashbacks. All of these flashbacks combine to give the reader the truth about what previously took place, and the sections in between focused on the characters struggle to reconcile who she was before with the person she is now.
Her identity struggle dominated the story’s present day and made for a harrowing tale to emerge. The plot might have been kept to a minimum but the emotions were kept at a high, making this a poignant account of a traumatic ordeal.
#bookmail Big thanks to @jazzbartlett and @chickenhsebooks for this copy of #AmyChelseaStacieDee by @marygthompson! pic.twitter.com/vz3xVG921V
— Kate Ormand (@kateormand) January 23, 2017
