Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone

by Kat Rosenfield

An arresting un-coming-of-age story, from a breathtaking talent

Becca has always longed to break free from her small, backwater hometown. But the discovery of an unidentified dead girl on the side of a dirt road sends the town--and Becca--into a tailspin. Unable to make sense of the violence of the outside world creeping into her backyard, Becca finds herself retreating inward, paralyzed from moving forward for the first time in her life.

Short chapters detailing the last days of Amelia Anne Richardson's life are intercut with Becca's own summer as the parallel stories of two young women struggling with self-identity and relationships on the edge twist the reader closer and closer to the truth about Amelia's death.

Genres: Young Adult, Mystery, Contemporary, Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Thriller

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 5, 2012

Reviews

[Wendy Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been amazing year for young adult literature for mature audiences. From The Miseducation of Cameron Post to the upcoming Monstrous Beauty, it's been incredibly exciting to find books that aren't afraid to push boundaries, ask questions, and immerse their readers in unusual literary styles. Is this in recognition that more and more adults are reading YA? Perhaps. I just hope the trend continues.

One of my favorite books this year is definitely Kat Rosenfeld's Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone. It's the story of Amelia Anne Richardson, a girl found brutally murdered on the side of a dirt road--but it's also the story of Becca, who is spending a last summer at home in her small town. It's a mystery without easy answers, it's a snapshot of a girl's coming into her own, and it's a sad, painful testament to the trauma that envelopes the end of a love affair.

Our first meeting was romantic. High school legend-like, it made me yearn to stay with him just for the chance to tell our kids someday about how their father had swept me off my feet at the tender age of sixteen. About the bonfire at Hunter's Point and the coltish-skinny, cigarette-smoking boy with shaggy hair, sitting apart from his friends, who looked across the flames at me with such intensity that he himself seemed to be on fire.

The writing is entrancing, with a slow, rhythmic cadence that captures the moody summer violence that both girls experience. It isn't an easy book or typical page-turning mystery by any means, and it's likely to be very polarizing in its style and its content. I'm not certain we ever get to know either girl as well as I would have liked, either, and I think I would have been more moved by their plight if their stories didn't parallel quite so much. But I still found myself fascinated by the language and the mystery of what happens to Amelia Anne and Becca, whose true fates seem elusive even at the conclusion of the book. Readers who appreciated the writing in Cameron Post or the dreamy smoke and mirrors of Imaginary Girls will likely fall in love with Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, too.

This review also appears in The Midnight Garden. An advance copy was provided by the publisher. Recommended for mature YA readers only.

Win a copy of this book over on our blog! If you enjoy more mature, literary YA, you'll likely appreciate the author's prose.

[Whitney Atkinson]

DNF at page 84. I'm at the point where I just can't even push my way through YA contemporary. This book is pretty, but boring.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Things I didn't like:
- Purple prose.
- Lengthy, repetitive descriptions.
- Weird tangents that I couldn't connect with the main story. I dunno, what was the main story? Everything was so convoluted and patchy.
- Every character except James.
- Alll the dramatic fight scenes.
- The pointless red herring.
- The lack of a substantial plot.
- Switching from first to third person - so jarring.
- The unbelievable, unsatisfying ending.

Things I liked:
- James.
- The vivid imagery.
- The parallel character arcs.
- The small town setting.
- How different it was to anything I've read before.

[Tatiana]

Objectively speaking, Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is well written. (Hence, no rating from me, even though I didn't finish it.) Kat Rosenfield is (mostly) in control of her very evocative, atmospheric prose:

"Murder in a small town is always more than a paragraph in the local paper. In a place so insulated, where lives are so small and gone about so quietly, violent death hangs in the air - tinting everything crimson, weaving itself into a shimmering heat that rises off the winding asphalt roads at noon. It oozes from taps and runs through the gas pumps. It sits at the dinner table, murmuring in urgent low tones under the clinking of glassware." (ARC, p. 59)

It's pretty and it will appeal to many readers. I've seen this novel being compared to Nova Ren Suma's Imaginary Girls, which I haven't read, but I would compare it to Kirsten Hubbard's Like Mandarin.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is set in a small town, out of which the narrator, a recent high school graduate Becca, longs to escape. The laziness and boredom of Becca's last summer home is interrupted by first a mean break-up with her boy-friend and then a discovery of the body of a brutally murdered young woman.

While I expected this book to be more of a mystery, mostly it was a slow, contemplative narrative about the suffocating quality of small towns, and that period in a young person's life when she/he can't wait to leave the old behind and start anew somewhere else, in a completely different, exciting place.

I felt like both Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone and Like Mandarin were heavy on description and atmosphere and setting, but as far as characters - I just didn't care about them and couldn't get into their problems and their experiences.

In the case of Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone I decided not to force myself through the motions of reading something I wasn't enjoying and skipped to the end of the book to find out the killer's identity. Beyond that, nothing kept me attached to the story. Pretty words without compelling characters do nothing for me.

But I am sure this novel will be a hit with some readers.

[Donna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone Amelia Anne is dead and gone but she apparently left behind her thesaurus because her story was quite adjective-alicious. But, once I waded through the overabundance of metaphors and descriptive prose, it was a fairly ok read....until the last 30 or so pages. That ending was bullshit. I was so angry about the fact that I had been drawn in to the suspense of this murder/mystery only to be rewarded with some half ass muddle-muck of an ending. Not to mention that it just WOULD NOT, COULD NOT logically have happened that way. (view spoiler)[ If someone is beat in the head with a tire iron and then repeatedly bludgeoned around the face and body, I refuse to believe they would be coherent enough to correctly analyze the extent of their injuries enough to know they are dying and then request that a complete stranger that suddenly appears out of the bushes on a dark road in the middle of the night finish the job and kill them. There is NO WAY IN HELL that, once he confesses to killing her (and explains that it was at her request), hiding evidence, interfering with and investigation, etc, the state would give him only probation for it after deciding that she would have died in another hour anyway. I'm sure SOMEBODY would have suggested that perhaps calling an ambulance might have been a better choice in the situation. Even with our screwy justice system, this could not have possibly played out like this. I know of a girl in the town where I grew up who went to PRISON for 3 years for taking her car to a car wash the day after her husband murdered someone. And she had nothing to do with the actual murder but her ass was still charged with accessory after the fact or some such thing. So it's just not a plausible or even a logical ending (hide spoiler)]This less than perfect ending, the overly descriptive writing, and the fact that I found the main character, Becca, to be utterly unlikable, left me a rather grumpy reader after finishing this book. I guess one could look at it as Becca was a "flawed" main character, but I just thought she was nothing but angst and asshattery. This is an example of some of her "personality" "Rebecca Williams?""That's me," I said, hoisting my backpack. The fat girl-whose named turned out to be, hilariously, Bonnie Biggs-smiled and waved at me. Ugh. Needless to say, I did not enjoy Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone and certainly don't recommend it. However, there are other people who thought that this was a wonderful story and if you're at all curious about this book, take a look at Wendy's review here for another perspective.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book alright. The writing was beautiful but the story just didn't fit together in some parts. The mystery aspect was cool but not enough of a mystery to really be haunting.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lush, lush writing and a twist I did not see coming. I mean, I sort of thought it could go down as it did, but I didn't think it'd ACTUALLY happen.

This was a dark, twisted, and complex story. I think the flap copy does it little justice, actually. It's a story about being trapped and becoming free, and it's a metaphor played out via not only murder and destruction, but sex and dreams and reaching for the future while feeling completely stuck in the past.

Reminded me so much style-wise of Nova Ren Suma's Imaginary Girls. Topically, not the same, but they tread some really interesting similar territory, almost down to how nature and place drive you to believe certain things.

Full review here: http://www.stackedbooks.org/2012/07/a...

[Katy Upperman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amelia Anne had me at hello. The beautiful cover, mesmerizing synopsis, and steady stream of rave reviews were initially intriguing. But then there was the first line:

The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky.

Amazing, right? I’m happy to report that each line that follows the first is equally stunning. So are the characters, the setting, and the desperate, raw tone of this novel.

Kat Rosenfield holds nothing back in the weaving of Rebecca and Amelia’s parallel stories. Her prose is enchantingly gritty, and the relationships she fosters between her characters feel real and flawed and dangerously precarious. Amelia Anne is a fast read, one part literary fiction, one part murder mystery, with a twist that packs one heck of a punch. It’s also one of those books that is simultaneously inspiring (I want to write a book like this!) and discouraging (I’ll never be able to write a book like this…). Writers: Read it, perhaps, when you’re not drafting or in the middle of heavy revisions. But DEFINITELY read it.

[Christina (A Reader of Fictions) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, that awkward moment where you read a book that's come highly recommended to you from just about everyone you know and then you don't like the book. There seem to be a lot of times where I'm that guy: the one who goes against the grain of popular opinion. I could list a number of books my friends all loved that I didn't like much at all, as well as ones pretty much no one else cared for that I thought were fabulous. Honestly, it's frustrating this divide that leaves me agreeing with others no more than 3/4 of the time.

Though I did not particularly enjoy this book, I am not blind to its charms, so do allow me to start there. Kat Rosenfield has, no doubt, a marvelous career ahead of her. With the first sentence, I knew that I would love her writing, and I was right about that at least. If this is how well she writes a debut, she will be going big places. Her style perfectly matched the tone of the novel, a mood of hopelessness, of loss, and of confusion.

Also on the positive side, I give Rosenfield full credit for telling a unique story, one I have never seen the likes of in YA fiction. She parallels the lives of the titular Amelia Anne and Becca, born and raised in the town where Amelia Anne breathed her last. Both girls are in love, or think they are, with boys who fail to please them sexually. Both have big plans that they fear their boyfriends will not support. Amelia Anne graduated from college the same day that Becca graduated from high school. Amelia Anne died, stuck forever in some sense in this town where Becca dreads being trapped.

Moving into what I did not like now, I have to go back to the writing. Much as I loved the way Rosenfield phrased things and put together her sentences, I did not like the storytelling method she used. I did like getting to see both from Becca's perspective in the present and Amelia Anne's perspective in the days leading up to her death, although I really hate the way her chapters weren't given chapter numbers. What drove me crazy, however, was that the narration occasionally either switched to third person omniscient in Becca's section or that she was telling the story from some unidentified date in the future. The numbered chapters often included reflections on things Becca simply could not know or hints at knowledge she could not yet have possessed. These details detracted from the novel for me, rather than adding additional crucial knowledge.

Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone is one of those books about terrible people. All of them, with the exception of Amelia Anne, are awful. I did not like a single one of them. Of course, sometimes authors can make this work, make you curious about characters you would happily hurl off a cliff. In this case, though, I just did not care about them. When the dramatic twists happened, instead of being shocked and excited, I was more like "whatever, can we please move this along?" and entirely bored with the whole thing. No matter how clever twists are, if you're not emotionally invested, they lack impact.

Were it not for the beauty of the writing, this rating would be a 2. Though I didn't like this, I urge you not to take this book off your list solely based on my review, as so many reviewers I trust implicitly loved it. As it is, I would read something else of Rosenfield's in a heartbeat, because of how incredibly talented I can tell she is.

[Steph | bookedinsaigon · Rating 3 out of 5]

AMELIA ANNE IS DEAD AND GONE is not really a book that wants you to like it. From the uncomfortable opening sex scene to the way Becca’s plotline ends up intersecting with that of Amelia Anne’s death, it’s like you’re forcibly pressed close to the story and its ugliness, so that every blemish is magnified. If you’re the kind of reader who likes this no-gloss dissection of flawed characters and setting, then great! It wasn’t my type of read, but I can see why other will find this winning.

Say goodbye to your romantic conception of the American small town. Bridgeton is vicious and claustrophobic, its bright spots—such as stars at night and a swimming hole—marred by the harsh reality of tensions between locals and summer residents, people’s desperate desire to escape its black hole gravity. As someone who definitely has a romantic conception of the American small town, AMELIA ANNE’s depiction nearly made me cry, it was so unforgiving. It’s the same with the characters. They gossip and slander and take sides and make poor decisions and say terrible things to one another. But Kat Rosenfield does not apologize for reality—and nor should she. Even I have to respect her for that.

That being said, if you’re the kind of reader who likes a certain amount of happiness in your books, AMELIA ANNE might not deliver. Becca, the protagonist, is not particularly likable: she denies the harshness of reality by retreating within herself, and forgives her boyfriend for his really very heartless act. While in theory I can understand her reactions—she’s on the brink of leaving Bridgeton, exciting but also terrified, when Amelia Anne’s shocking death sends her reeling and petrifies her—I don’t think they were explained as well as they could have been in the book.

In addition, I found the prose too “pretty” in an unoriginal sort of way. Unfortunately I don’t have the book on hand to find examples, but passages that I could tell were supposed to be insightful or beautiful instead left me unmoved. I like turns of phrase that surprise me, a la Beth Kephart or Cath Crowley, but if you’ve read your fair share of lit-er-uh-chur, you’re going to realize that you’ve seen all the similes and metaphors here before.

I wanted AMELIA ANNE IS DEAD AND GONE to be emotionally and literarily earth-shattering, but it wasn’t for me. However, I can bet there’s an avid audience for this book. For those who prefer their YA lit darker and without supernatural delusions of luv, check this out.

[Liz Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The men looked at her as she looked away from them. Seeing Amelia, who saw nothing at all."
The writing of this book was beautiful, and the story intriguing although predictable. It also has sort of an open ending, but I did not feel like it detracted from the story at all. Worthy of a re-read.

[rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

As evidenced by the fact that I read the first eight (EIGHT, HOW EMBARRASSING) installments in the Pretty Little Liars series, I eat teen mysteries up like they are the most delicious candy. That combination of high school level prose and sneeringly evil kids usually does it for me. When I saw that this book was being loved up all over Goodreads, it was a natural pick.

I'm not even (that) ashamed to admit that I liked the snarky, silly Pretty Little Liars way more than the very earnest effort of Kat Rosenfield in Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone. There are two reasons for this.

Number one: Amelia Anne is very meta about how claustrophobic it is to grow up in a small town and how desperately people coming of age in small towns want to escape them. Sound familiar? Yes, that's because you've read it 1700 times before and another laborious but sincere metaphor for the travel of gossip is not going to illuminate anything for you but will instead make you gloss over large chunks of writing to get to the part with the dead girl again.

Number two: it's very apparent that this is a first book, because the writing really (really) wants to be "prose." There's a lot of redundancy. Words are repeated. Phrases rehashed. Sentences said again in different ways. Entire paragraphs convey one idea. You see? Repeating things does not make them more meaningful, just creates inertia and suggests that the writer had space to fill or lacks the confidence to let declarative sentences stand on their own without elaboration, or maybe just that this is what it means for a book to be "literary" now and maybe we should succumb to that Tao Lin trend just to redefine.

...on second thought, no. Never.

To be fair, the plotting is decent. A bit heavy on teen angst but the "how" of the twist at the end, for a mystery, isn't predictable. (The red herrings, though, are glaring.) I wish I liked it -- new, young, and buzz-generating female author, yay! -- but I really didn't.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read books I've enjoyed and books I've hated. I've read books that made me happy and books that made me sad. Very occasionally, I've read a book that leaves me enraged.

"Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone" is such a book. Two hundred plus pages of an eighteen year old girl whining finally cummulating in the most ridiculous ending of all time.

This is not a mystery, Rosenfield gives you very few clues to work with. This is not a coming of age story. The main character, Rebecca, is a recent high school graduate who's had sex and regularly drinks liquor. This is not a romance. People in this town wouldn't recognize romance if it gave them a hickey.

Rebecca lives in a small town where no one ever stops smoking. (EVERY character is constantly lighting up a cigarette to the point I assumed Phillip Morris did the underwriting). Rebecca just graduated with honors and has plans to go to the State University. She hates her town and can't wait to leave it -- except she's desperately grasping at any chance to stay. Her focus for this is James, her boyfriend. James is a high school dropout, with a drinking problem and a scary friend, Craig, who may be a psychopath. James knows he's the wrong guy of Rebecca. He's stuck in place while she plans to move on.

So we get pages and pages of whining about this impasse mixed in with passages about a dead girl who's body shows up on the side of route 128 one morning. No one knows who she is. Details on how she died are sketchy. Rebecca thinks Craig might be involved. She's upset about her parent's imploding marriage but not enough to engage with them any time they try to talk to her.

In the end there's a can-you-believe-this-got-by-an-editor fight scene in a parking lot where Craig gets hurt, Rebecca calls James and discovers what really happened to Amelia. You won't believe it because it's completely unbelievable.

Then, despite the fact that Rebecca never hit anyone or lied to anyone, she decides she's completely at fault for everything that's happened.

I'm embarrassed I spent money on this book.

[Gigi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't even finish reading this book. I think I'm somewhere around chapter 10. I'm going to have to literally force myself to finish it if I can weed through all the unnecessary prose. JUST TELL THE DAMN STORY. I don't care about how the rose bushes or whatever the fuck smells during the summer. What does that have to do with advancing the plot? Not a mother fucking thing. The main character is upset that she's going off to college and has to leave her boyfriend home. -_- This boyfriend recently lost his mother to cancer and basically needs the main character (Rebecca? I think) for his survival. I think. I really don't fucking know because the real reason is hidden in the unnecessary prose this book is littered with. I'm tempted to spoil the ending for myself, but I pretty sure I won't even understand it.

Why is it so hard to find good fiction. Why do grown ass people insist on writing YA. Why do I insist on reading it.

So many questions.
No answers.

And I have yet to figure out why Amelia Anne had to die or who killed her and I don't even care. I thought this would be a murder mystery/crime type book but it's just a bunch of teenage angst.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

“That girl, dead and gone, her spirit trapped forever just inside town limits—she’d come from someplace, was going somewhere. Until destiny had stepped into the road in front of her, stopped her forward motion, drawn a killing claw against the white, fluttering swell of her future. Whispering, ‘Oh no, you don’t.’

When you made plans, the saboteurs came out to play.”

The night of Becca’s high school graduation brings her one step closer to leaving small-town life forever. The following day brings dreadful news of a young girl that was found beaten to death on the side of the road. The death of this unknown girl stirs Becca’s doubts and causes her to become fearful of this outside world that she’s received her first glimpse of. Was this girl killed by an outsider or is the one to be feared someone from her own town?

I was warned that Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone isn’t a book for everyone. I was warned about the prose. I was warned about the excessive descriptions. But those warnings were clearly not meant for me. The intro line managed to grab me instantly. Hook, line, and sinker.

‘The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky.’

You couldn’t tear this book out of my hands after that. I worked reluctantly. I slept reluctantly. I couldn’t stop reading until I had completely devoured this book. The author is so adroit with the English language that I wish it wasn’t her debut so I had a full backlog of her work to go back and read. Rosenfield’s descriptions are excessive but felt completely necessary for this type of story. The additional wording added a heightened sense of what was truly happening, a heightened sense of dread. The continued investigation into this girls death never succeeded in actually getting any closer to solving but it did succeed in completely unraveling the town and each of its inhabitants.

Amelia Anne centers primarily around Becca who after having sex with her boyfriend James was unceremoniously dumped immediately after. The death of this anonymous girl and the effect that her death has on this small town is actually more of a side story. The story alternates between Amelia’s final days and Becca’s transformed days following the discovery of the mysterious body. As the story unfolds, the reader is shown the similarities between the girls despite their differences. The mystery in how the two came to be connected seemed to be an impossibility. Seeing the pieces of their stories slowly merge and form the bigger picture was a revelation as I managed to remain in the dark until the very end.

‘In a place so insulted, where lives are so small and gone about so quietly, violent death hangs in the air – tinting everything crimson, weaving itself into the shimmering heat that rises off the winding asphalt roads at noon.’

Certain details of this story really stood out for me. Firstly was Rosenfield’s portrayal of a mature teenage love in its genuine form with all its unnecessary complexity. Her descriptions of this small town and its inhabitants were completely on point. Not surprising, the author grew up in a small town in New York with a population of less than 3k people. And lastly, her ability to write such an intricate and alluring tale in less than 300 pages.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is an exquisitely written debut novel that’s flawlessly layered and incredibly captivating.

[Isamlq · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is my kind of book, even if it really isn’t ever fast paced. It’s writing you either get or don’t; I certainly did since atmospheric and moody are but two of the things that come to mind.

Their two narratives were cleverly wove together. At first glance the leads feel different, with one whose a future that follows a certain path, a path she’s become familiar with AND another who leaves her own for something different. Yet, think on it more, and there's a symmetry to what’s going on with both. Plans are what they have in common; plans and intentions and paths that go certain ways. Besides that, theirs an uncertainty that they shared too. So, not worlds apart, after all.

With Rebecca’s life about to begin, it’s questions on Amelia’s that fills the former. Seeing the latter’s moments unfold became even more interesting because the more one read, the more clear it was that they’re similarly placed. Given all that, I’d have loved to learn more about both of them because as is there’s this feeling that one girl’s story almost mirrored the other.

The moody feel of it is only made greater by how Rebecca describes the town. This place that she’s so eager to escape is almost another character here. With the way everyone knows everyone else’s business, it felt stifling and closed off, with her talk on outsiders versus it providing a home to certain individuals. Then there’s the matter of one persons words leading to another and how the same leads the rest to behave.

[Eyehavenofilter · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say this was elequently written, would be the least I could possibly tell anyone who might think of not reading this amazing book. I just fell in love with everything that lay within the covers of this book.
Like nestling down in my bed with a fuzzy cat at my head,
and another purring at my feet, it was both comfy and a little dangerous, if I moved too quickly one cat could attack.
" ....gossip skipped up and down the asile and murmered in the spaces between the worn wood pews, until the black-cloaked pastor, his flushed face and thinning hair grown shiny and damp with perspiration, paused midsermon and said " Excuse me, but I must insist that the noise stop immediately."
it's rich with description, so adept the reader can almost smell the air in this small out of the way back woods town.
Becca, James, Amelia Anne, and Luke are all on a collision course with love, death, and separation.
Small towns have small secrets, some that should be shared, and most that should never see the lght of day.
Who stays, who goes, does anyone really have a choice?
This was so lovingly woven together, words that seemed to flow through a babbling brook, swirling around the rocks and making eddys in the sentences that were just breathtaking to read.
Absolutely, "Beau-te-ous"!

[Mon · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at page 40

[ALPHAreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the same time that Amelia Anne Richardson was dying on a lonely dirt road, Becca was having her heart broken in the back of her boyfriend’s truck.

While Becca gets ready to blow out of her small Southern town and mend the heart that James broke, news of the dead girl travels fast and persistently. And in the wake of her murder, when suspicions turn inwards, James looks to reconnect with Becca over the summer before she leaves for college . . . but with her father as the local judge, Becca finds herself sinking deeper and deeper into the mystery of the dead girl.

Running alongside Becca and James’s last summer together is the story of Amelia. The girl who found herself in acting, but feared she’d lose her boyfriend, Luke, when she broke it to him that their carefully planned life was going to be derailed.

‘Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone’ is the debut young adult novel from Kat Rosenfield.

I’m torn about this novel. Admittedly, when I started reading it there were sad events going on in Melbourne that seemed to eerily echo Rosenfield’s storyline. I am of course talking about Jill Meagher’s tragic death. Amelia Anne being discovered on the side of a sad dirt road sent an awful shiver down my spine, since the very day I started reading it was announced that Jill Meagher’s body had been discovered in a shallow grave on the side of a road in Gisborne.

I actually had to put this book down a few times, because Rosenfield was so acutely and frighteningly describing the atmosphere in Melbourne in the wake of Meagher’s death and the arrest of a man;

In a small town, murder is three-dimensional. We make it that way, elevating it and turning it over until it’s more than a simple tragedy, until it becomes tangible. Murder in a small town is always more than a paragraph in the local paper. In a place so insulated, where lives are so small and gone about so quietly, violent death hangs in the air – tinting everything crimson, weaving itself into the shimmering heat that rises off the winding asphalt roads at noon. It oozes from the taps and runs through the gas pumps. It sits at the dinner table, murmuring in urgent low tones under the clinking of glassware.

I will say that’s the strength of this novel – the atmosphere and Rosenfield’s sinisterly beautiful voice. She is a wonderful writer – with a lovely lyricism to her words that’s both creepy and compelling. But where this novel flails is in the actual meat and bones plot.

The blurb describes how “Becca and Amelia’s parallel stories twist the reader closer and closer to the horrifying truths of Amelia’s last days.” Except Becca and Amelia’s parallel stories don’t ring true. Yes, Becca is looking at the prospect of moving on from her boyfriend, James, once the summer ends and she leaves him behind when she goes off to college. Meanwhile, Amelia is in college but has made the decision to pursue an acting career – knowing her boyfriend, Luke, won’t appreciate the news of their life plans being thrown off-course by her whims. Amelia’s chapters, set in the days before her death, felt clunky and I never really made any sort of connection between her and Becca.

But where I think this story really missed an opportunity was in the small-town repercussions of murder. Becca writes a lot about how the discovery of Amelia Anne’s body is impacting the residents and feeding the rumour-mill. Perhaps the best atmospheric scene is at the book’s beginning when local boy cops, Jack and Stan, lose their lunch and find themselves completely out of their depth in dealing with a murder. Another great scene was Becca’s omniscient narration in describing how Grant Willard became a local celebrity for being the person to first discover the body. I loved these scenes in which we got to meet the locals of her town, and see how the death has impacted and influenced them. But the majority of the book is concerned with Becca and her small circle of friends – particularly James’s friend, the creepy Craig. I wish Rosenfield had written more about the characters of Becca’s town – because it was these scenes that showed off her talent for atmosphere and characterization.

I also thought there was a big aspect of the book missing in Becca’s relationship with her father. Her father, who is the town judge, is her connection to Amelia Anne’s case. Becca mentioned on numerous occasions that the relationship between her mother and father is strained, at best. But her father is really a non-character. I think a lot of what was missing in the parallel connections between Amelia Anne and Becca could have been plugged if Rosenfield had relied more on Becca’s father as a character – and a gateway to the case.

And as much as I loved Rosenfield’s atmospheric writing, there were times when I was utterly confused by moments of convolution. The timeline is particularly hard to wrap your head around. For one thing, Becca is narrating this story from somewhere in the future, looking back. But there were moments when Becca would be in a moment, and then something would trigger her memory and within the same scene she would recount a memory from earlier. If that sounds confusing, it was. There was an instance when Becca has returned from inspecting her college campus and is in a scene with James, but within the same paragraph she begins recounting what happened on the campus tour . . . and it took me a while to realize the scene had suddenly split between now/then without an ellipsis or line break or anything to help aid the timeline.

All in all, this book could have been superb. Rosenfield could have written a small town murder of ‘Mockingbird’ proportions. She writes pitch-perfect town characters and sets a beautifully creepy atmosphere of a town choking on a mystery. However, it’s a shame that Rosenfield didn’t spend more time introducing us to Becca’s small town characters. And the link between Amelia Anne and Becca felt hollow. A missed-opportunity for a strong father/daughter, and Rosenfield’s complex lyricism did not lend itself to time-shifts.

[Sara Grochowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really haven't a clue where to begin with this review... I suppose I could start by saying that I love this book with surprising depth. For years I've named Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road as my favorite novel because no other book has ever garnered near the emotional connection or caused me to sob near as hard... until Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone.

The novel is told in alternating points-of-view between Becca, a small town girl who's about to leave home for university, and Amelia Anne, the girl found dead and broken beside a road in the small town Becca yearns to leave behind.

Part of my connection to this novel stems from my understanding of Becca. I've been the girl from a small town who couldn't wait to escape. I'd been in her position, wondering if I should leave my high school boyfriend behind, but terrified to do so. Becca and I share so many of the same fears and look at things in such similar ways. I like to think it's because Rosenfield successfully captured the mindset of someone who grew up in a small town, but always believed there was something more out there.

While the high school me identified with Becca, the college me had a deeper understanding of Amelia Anne. This girl, who the reader glimpses through short chapters visiting moments in her life leading up to her untimely death, escaped to university like Becca longs to do. She did what was expected of her and finished her degree, but it wasn't in something she was passionate about. Amelia Anne finally decides to start living her life for herself only to have it tragically cut short... to become unknown on the side of a country road. While it might be dramatic, Amelia Anne, with her bravery to do what she loved, everyone else be damned, reminded me that I need to do the same... because you never know what tomorrow holds.

I already feel like I've been a bit spoilery and writing more will guarantee spoilers, so I should probably stop while I'm ahead.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is a remarkably powerful novel filled with gorgeous writing, perfectly flawed characters, and a painfully real setting. Kat Rosenfield has blown me away with her debut novel. I can guarantee I'll be anxiously awaiting for her next offering.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those book that is gathering a lot of love and I felt rather "meh" about. Why? In part it's the slightly florrid writing ("Stan's gesturing hand passed over the woman - the life wrung out in bruises beneath her eyes, soaking and blooming and drying the dirt, as he waved his palm over her breasts and the curve of her hip and her delicate, motionless face."). Whew! It felt like very other sentence was like that, which is a little tiring.

The other problem I had was with Becca. She's supposed to have Big Plans, wanting desperately to get away from the town and its gossips and lack of, well, anything. The finding of the body and how that affects her is supposed to be freighted with meaning, but I didn't really get that. Even her relationship with James felt muted. The parallels between Becca and Amelia Anne are (per the jacket copy) strong, but again, I read them as muted. Was I supposed to worry that Becca, too, would end up dead? Or that she was trapped in this small, backwards town? It wasn't clear.

The mystery of who the dead girl is, who killed her and who knew what could have been far sharper, particularly if the writing had been toned down. Becca's emotions (hinted at, but often ignored for pages) could also have been more prominent.

Copy provided by publisher.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

For this review and more, check out my blog, Living Is Reading!



This is a really frustrating book to rate (although it’s very easy to review since I have many things to say about it).

A large part of me wants to just give this 4.5 stars, and maybe even a 5 star rating if I’m feeling particularly generous, despite the glaring flaws in this (there’s only two, but they’re biggies in my opinion), so a 4 isn’t the most exact rating. Maybe a 4.25? However since I personally don’t give out those ratings I’m just giving it a 4.

So, Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone seemed to be a pretty quiet book. It wasn’t like a lot of books this year that came with heaps of hype, and tons of people reading it left and right. In fact, I think only four of my GR friends read this, one DNFed it, two gave it a 4, and another a 3. The reviews for it in general seem to be very polarizing, and I’m going to leave a link to two of my friends reviews, since they’re both very well written and informative, and may help you decide whether this is your book (I believe all of our reviews share at least one recurring complaint).

I live in a pretty average-sized town, not a small one like you see in a lot of YA mysteries with a population of 1,000 or less. However, one of the things that really brought this book to life for me was the desire to up and run at the first chance you get. That desire just seemed to flow through the veins of this book, an entire central theme of freedom. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my town is a nice place to live in, but I desperately want to get out of here, move someplace, fresh, new.

Easy connections here, and it made for a very entertaining reading experience.

However, it’s these characters that I connected to that are one of my only problems with this. While I did connect with our MC Becca and the titular character Amelia Anne, I never really got the feeling that they (and the side characters) could be real people. Their story was compelling, and their drive was great to read about, but they aren’t the thing that drove the book for me, entirely. Still, they entertained me, and I wanted to read on and find out what would happen to them, but there were other elements that helped it tremendously.

I think this is a pretty great example of YA literary fiction. It’s very character-driven, so if you don’t connect/like these people, then this book probably won’t work for you. I suggest sampling it, see if you feel any interest in reading on with these characters, and if you don’t, then I recommend not venturing further, since the mystery presented in the synopsis never takes center stage.

Speaking of that mystery, this book is pushing it to the limit with that. That was not a mystery. That was the obvious not being spoken until the end, but it was so obvious considering the fact that it couldn’t be anything else. I mean, they tried this super-obvious red herring, but Rosenfield simply tried way too hard, that I might’ve given this 3.5 if it’d been the actual killer since it would’ve been one of the most poorly written mysteries . . . ever (and it still kind of is).

I mean, what is it with authors writing mysteries these days? I mean, is it that hard to write something like Dark Places by Gillian Flynn or And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie? A mystery with a killer that isn’t as obvious as having their name shouted in your ear?

I’m rather indifferent about the romance in this. It doesn’t take center stage, so I can’t say it’s a total fail, or overly sappy/borderline abusive (well, not the Becca-James romance). It’s just not the most well-developed element of the book is all I’m saying.

Alas, I cannot deny Kat Rosenfield’s ability to create some of the most captivating, evocative prose I’ve come across in YA. Seriously, this woman has extreme talent - those last two pages were sending shivers down my back the entire time. The writing completely brought me to the hot, sweaty, paranoid cage of this small town.

Like, seriously, when is this woman’s next book coming out, because I needed it like yesterday, when I still had 100 pages left.

So, if you would like reasons as to why somebody DNFed this, I recommend reading Tatiana’s fabulous reivew.

For a 4 star review, I’d recommend reading the equally fabulous review written by Wendy.

To wrap things up, beautifully written, engaging characters (for the most part), atmospheric, creepy, and a great debut from a very promising new author.

[Merin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5 stars.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone was a book that I was very much looking forward to reading. In fact, my anticipation was so great that I actually requested that my library purchase the book, instead of waiting for them to come across the title themselves, which can sometimes take ages. When the book was first released, I heard nothing but praise for it. The reviews promised atmospheric prose, gorgeous descriptions, and a slower-paced but still gripping plot. So it was with glee that I dove in to my copy, only to find that, instead of a book I'd love, I instead was entrenched in one that I ... really did not.

In order to be a "good" book for me personally, there has to be something that calls you back to the story, and makes you want to pick up the book and lose yourself in its pages. That desire to lock yourself away from the world and read was sorely lacking throughout my experience with Amelia Anne. There really isn't any way to sugar coat this; for me, this book was a slog from beginning to end. Couple that with overly-descriptive prose - sometimes taking several lines of text just to get to the end of a sentence - and I found myself doing something I very rarely do: skimming like crazy. I also really didn't like the main character (one passage in particular when she was recalling her visit to her potential university really set my teeth on edge), which made the reading experience even more difficult because you're stuck inside her head nearly the entire time. What was being marketed as a murder mystery-type book was really more of a character study into a small town girl about to make an enormous life change and leave everything she knew behind; perhaps, had I known that, I may have been a bit more guarded in my enthusiasm.

However, there were some things I did like. I loved how Becca and Amelia's lives really mirrored each other and followed the same arc. I also liked the dual point of views; Amelia's outlook on life was so very different from Becca's, full of more sunshine and smiles and laughter, that it helped keep the book from being bogged down in Becca's darkness and uncertainty. And I did like some of the flashbacks, which helped the reader understand how life in this particular small town worked and how it shaped the residents. However, there was TOO much of this in some cases, which really slowed the plot down and, again, made the book drag. I also really loved the atmospheric descriptions of the summer heat: the dryness, the shimmering pavement, the lethargy that takes hold of you when it's so hot. And the descriptions of the scenery that surrounds the town of Bridgeton was likewise perfect. I could have used more of this and less of the metaphors that populated the rest of the book.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is a quasi-mystery, in that you don't know "whodunit" until you're nearly at the end. But the path that the book takes in order to get to this ultimate climax was too winding and full of strange tangents for me to really enjoy the experience. While really shining in terms of the atmosphere, overall there was just too much description to make this a quick and engrossing read, at least for me. Obviously, your mileage may vary, as plenty of people have this on their "best of 2012" lists!

***

To see more of my reviews, please visit me @ Read and Reviewed!

[Katriina ❆ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nah. Just, nah.
This book really wasn't for me, and I don't really understand how it could be for anyone.
Amelia Anne is dead and gone had one main message that made me sick. You know, I have a "always aim for the highest, don't content yourself with something lower than your standards" mentality.
This book would deserve zero stars alone for it's foul message.
Amelia Anne is dead and gone had a message of "Don't you ever make plans to escape from your run-of-the-mill-life because all of these plans are going to fail and you're gonna be stuck in your boring life forever".
And that's just, well, bloody ridiculous and it bothers me quite a lot. That's the message your sending to your readers. Your, on average, teenage-aged readers. This is a YA-book.

I'm not a fan of YA books. I know that, you know that. We all know that, and I couldn't be more open about it. And yet, there's been YA books that I didn't consider bad. There's at least one that I consider good. I'm not a fan of YA, but I'm not the genre's sworn enemy. And I thought this book could be good. Really good.

I liked the premise of it, I adored the cover and I adored the name Amelia Anne, I adored the title. And I think would've really adored the prose too, but eventually, I didn't grow to ike this book. Especially because - after the first 30 pages - the prose became pretentious and the plot twist absolutely predictable. I mean, the book only has about 270 pages but if the "plot twist" becomes obvious after only 30 pages you notice that there's something terribly wrong with the ever so famous arc of suspense. That the elaboration can't be good. And this arc of suspense and this book, they really weren't.

There was literally no suspense going on, I didn't identify with the characters at all, as they are all utterly shallow, and occasionally I'd skim a couple of pages because about 95% of the book were descriptions of parties, Becca waiting tables, giggling girls, couples driving in a car, smoking, drinking and girls pondering how to best leave their boyfriends of over a year.

Maybe it's because I'm not american and have never sympathised with the ~american way of life~. This book was an awful lot about teenagers and smoking, drinking, driving and shallow relationships. Maybe it's my Finnish/German mentality, but if I settle for a boyfriend, I do it out of love and not because the relationship's a " nice summer flick " and I know no one who does. No one. Plus, I don't have shallow friendships, and I almost got offended at how easy they take both kinds of relationships in the book. I mean... seriously? Both girls and one of the guys constantly think of breaking up with their partners because they've reached their "expiry date" of about 3 months? Are you BLOODY kidding me? Man, I hope this isn't the typical american relationship because I'd feel sorry for each and every american I know.

The only character I liked a bit was Amelia Anne, basically because she reminded me of a friend of mine who I like a lot, and who's - ironically - called Amelie.
But that was it. And as I really didn't like anything but, well, the prose on the first 30 pages before it started to sound pretentious, and a character that had like 5 appearances.
The book was shallow, pretentiously written, lacking believable characters with believable emotions and a general ...

[Sara (sarabara081) · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can see more of my reviews at Forever 17 Books!

Intense and captivating, Kat Rosenfield’s Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone left me breathless. This tells the story of a girl named Rebecca who just graduated from High School and has plans to high-tail it out of her small town and move forward with her life without looking back. On the night of graduation, her boyfriend suddenly dumps her in a cruel manner and the body of a dead girl is found on the road in her town. No one knows who this girl is or what happened, except that it was murder. This rocks this quiet small town and weighs heavily on the habitants but no one more than Rebecca. She is at a crossroads in her life, wanting to move on but fearing life on the outside at the same time.

What is great about this novel is that it tells the story of both Rebecca and the aftermath of the mysterious murder but also the circumstances of Amelia’s life, leading up to how she ended up on that road. Like Rebecca, Amelia was also at a crossroads in her life. She had just graduated college and made a huge decision about her career path that completely deviated from her original course. She also felt very stifled by her life and wanted freedom and excitement. I loved how parallel their stories were and I absolutely loved both of these girls. They were relatable with realistic circumstances, thoughts and emotions and I found myself immersed in their lives. I was antsy to get to the end, to find out what truly happened to this poor girl and I was not disappointed! I was hanging on the edge of my seat until the very end!

My only complaint would be that I would often find myself confused on the timeline of events. I struggled with keeping track on whether Rebecca was retelling something that happened in the past or if it was currently happening. I would have to reread sections to figure out what was going on and when. There were also parts being told about past occurences in the town and I had a hard time understanding the relevance. I wish those transitions were told a bit better.

I cannot leave this review without expressing my love for the author’s beautiful and eloquent writing. Her words captivated me and left me spellbound.

We sat together, the rushing breeze making rustling sounds in the trees, the branches above our heads creaking, groaning, moving in time with the wind. The air was thick with the scent of wild roses.

So thick, that smell. It stifled, pressed back against the golden thrust of the sun. The wild rose wants to be remembered, wants to color the afternoon with its heady essence, so that every summer recollection is tinted with its sweet, soft-petaled scent. It was a blanket that covered everything, crept into my nose and flooded my eyes with perfume that couldn't be blinked away.

Gorgeous and so vivid! That was probably my favorite piece in the novel but there are many more that gave me chills as well.

Grittier than most contemporary fiction reads, Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is a standout. I must warn that there is sex in this novel, though not explicitly so. I highly recommend for older teens and up who are fans of realistic and dark thrillers.

[Pixie/PageTurners Blog(Amber) C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone has a raw, unrelenting prose that I found refreshing; it truly captures the teen voice and makes Becca & Amelia very relatable characters.

Becca's life is pretty much perfect - she just graduated high school, has a great boyfriend and is about to leave her small town life style behind and head off to college. On the night of her graduation everything changes; two things happen that night that makes Becca question herself and everyone around her - Becca's boyfriend breaks her heart and Amelia Anne is murdered.

Over the course of the story Becca will try to piece her life back together and the details surrounding Amelia Anne's murder; we will also get brief chapters from Amelia leading up to that night. Small towns talk and Becca's a good listener; it doesn't take her long to form her own conclusions about what really happened to Amelia that night. When Becca acts on her conclusions, unimaginable consequences occur, and the truth will set her free.

It's no surprise that I loved this book, I enjoy a good murder mystery; I want to solve the problem and I am usually good at it, but Amelia Anne's murderer kept me guessing. The truth behind Amelia's murder left me in utter disbelief - it was shocking and heartbreaking. I did have one slight issue with this book; the writing style is very unique and at times, was distracting. One moment you would be in the present and then the next Becca is remembering something; I had to reread passages to make sure I was on the right track. The descriptive writing captured the horrific nature of the crime; it is so detailed that I wouldn't recommend this to anyone that gets grossed out easily. If you are looking for a haunting one of a kind read pick up Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone

[Mari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is well written. The two interwoven stories of Amelia Anne and Becca come together so nicely to paint a portrait of what it means to leave certain things behind. Kat Rosenfield uses these two ladies to expertly comment on heartbreak, second chances, new beginnings, small towns, loss and love. There were so many times when I was simply swept away in her prose. It's a book propelled not by plot or characters, but simply by introspection.

Therein also lies the fault of Amelia Anne. For as beautiful as some parts of the story where, there just wasn't enough meat to the plot throughout the middle of the story. Many of the observations from Becca, about feeling stuck in town, about being unable to picture her future, about what murder has brought them as a community, were repeated a couple of times. The repetition helped to highlight the thinner portions of the story.

I didn't especially like Becca or Amelia. Becca was a little too weak and bland for my tastes, in this story of how she loses herself for a summer. Amelia was insensitive and came across as a tad selfish and spoiled. The only character I truly had any sympathy for was James. James continually made me re-think my opinion of him, and all the times I felt strongest throughout the book were directly tied to him.

Essentially, that's all I can say: a plot stretched too long and too thin, populated by characters who aren't easy to love, bolstered by very pretty writing.

Check it out if you like deep thoughts and ambling personal realizations with just a dash of mystery.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't a bad book, really. The writing had a tendency to get repetitive, with lists of sentences saying the same thing in slightly different ways. That sort of thing can work for dramatic effect/to drive a point home sometimes, but not once per (short) chapter - it felt like a TV show that always ends with a "poignant" voice over on what it is to live in a small town. The dark side of small towns isn't exactly new material, and the author didn't really succeed in adding much. Occasionally, though, the sentences were as beautiful as they were trying to be. The characters felt more like types than people (ohh, the wounded high school dropout), but they also had their moments. This is the author's first book, and I think she'll improve as she writes more, but Amelia Anne was just ok.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book I won through Goodreads giveaways. Fell in love with the cover. As you can imagine based around the title of the book it's not a happy go luck kind of read. You step into something that feels like you are stuck, too, just like the characters.


Good:


The writing did its purpose pulled you into the story. Descriptions are written flowery and the flow is good in this regard.


Bad:

The writing was a tiny bit too slow. But I managed to get through this and enjoyed the story.

[Rayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing and haunting, this book has fantastic writing, a compelling plot and a very twisted and dark look at how the death of someone, maybe someone you didn't even know, affects everyone. Review coming later.