Ivory is fourteen years old and is madly in love with fifteen-year-old Blake. She hangs out with a tough older crowd, drinks, smokes, and even has a pregnancy scare. One night Ivory doesn't come home. Her body is found a few months later, brutally stabbed to death. Blake stands accused of her murder, but the evidence is inconclusive. Who murdered Ivory Towle? Will the truth ever be known?
This book is written by a woman whose life's work as a high school teacher and teacher of writing is inspirational. I feel lucky to know her personally and feed from the positive energy she exudes into the world. End Over End, her first novel, introduces a multitude of vivid characters whose lives are affected by the murder of a small-town teenager. The tangle of voices, though at times hard to follow, paints a picture of the confusion, lies, bravado, insecurity, and sadness that colors the intentional killing of a girl so young. One criticism of the book is that I couldn't reconcile the juxtaposition of Kennedy's richly coiled imagery within the expanse of a slang-ridden, grammatically-questionable, parochial language.
I've read this one a bunch of times. It's amazing. Also depressing, but not without purpose. I was impressed at the author's skill in characterizing "troubled" (i.e. poverty stricken with limited opportunities) teens.
I never do this. Never ever. But i’m about 100 pages in and I just cant keep going. This book is entirely way too much all over the place. Its hard to figure out what shes even talking about have the time and i have zero desire to finish it🤷🏼♀️
Written in a compelling style but never really hits the mark. If I had known there would be no real ending with so many questions up in the air, I never would have started this book. I'm not a fan of fill in the blanks endings.
The book was good overall, I guess, but the plot line moves extremely slow. There are only two major parts to it, and it takes to long to explain what's happening because there are so many characters, it's really confusing.