The Perks Of Being A Book Addict discussion

Our July BOTM is Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight.



Book Summary
A stunning debut novel in which a single mother reconstructs her teenaged daughter's life, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life.

Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.

Kate can't believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who's never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate's faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead.

Seemingly unable to cope with what she'd done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school's roof in an act of "spontaneous" suicide. At least that's the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:

She didn't jump.

Sifting through Amelia's emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall's roof that day-and why she died.

Told in alternating voices, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, of love and betrayal, of trusted friends and vicious bullies. It's about how well a parent ever really knows a child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.

I really liked this book. I liked all the plot twists that were introduced for so many of the characters giving the story more depth.

Okay, just finished this book. I found it both sad and kind of ridiculous at the same time.

Sad because of (view spoiler)[how much everyone in Amelia's life basically failed her which lead to her feeling helpless. She put up with a lot of lies and blind eyes. (hide spoiler)]

Ridiculous because everyone's behaviors were just too unbelievable for me. Did nobody consider how their actions affect others? (view spoiler)[The teacher running the blog? She didn't want to 'hurt anyone' but posted some pretty awful things about her own students on there. (hide spoiler)]

Also, Kate and Amelia were just too darn perfect in every way (single mother who is beautiful, smart, a workaholic to the point that she hardly has time to talk to her daughter during the week, and yet still manages to have Fridays always devoted to her daughter).

I liked this book. I actually think I might have liked it more if I hadn't just read Gone Girl, which had better twists and turns to it. The book definitely kept me hooked though and I've passed it along to my friends.

Oh, I wish I could get to this book this month, but I am way overbooked. If I find it in my bookshelves, I may jump in at a later point.

I really liked this one and flew through it. My only problem is i felt like there might have been to many characters for me to keep track of. But i figured it out.

I thought it was good - it made me sad but some of that sadness is because I thought the troubling parts were realistic. However (view spoiler)[ I can't imagine any police letting a mother be that involved in an investigation. (hide spoiler)] Chase you are right about (view spoiler)[ the teacher. While I can imagine a teacher being selfish enough to do that - and I really think she was more working on her own writing/publishing and not trying to help students - there is no way she would think that was a positive thing for students. (hide spoiler)]

Kathleen wrote: "I really liked this one and flew through it. My only problem is i felt like there might have been to many characters for me to keep track of. But i figured it out."

I agree there were a lot of people to keep track of, and some of the characters didn't seem entirely necessary. (view spoiler)[Such as that guy Kate had met at the bar and exchanged emails with in her college days. (hide spoiler)].

You are right, Katie. I don't think that character really had a point/added to the story. MAYBE (view spoiler)[ the author was trying to cast more doubt on the identity of the father?? But that guy was never a serious contender for the role. (hide spoiler)]

Suzanne wrote: "You are right, Katie. I don't think that character really had a point/added to the story. MAYBE [spoilers removed]"

Yeah that's a good thought, maybe also to show (view spoiler)[what Kate gave up to raise Amelia. I don't know. I thought it was weird that in the end, when Kate's at Amelia's grave, she randomly brings up Rowan: "She thought then about Phillip. So far it had been only one cup of coffee and a couple of e-mails. With his short salt-and-pepper hair, the soft lines around his eyes, and his clean-shaven face, he looked nothing like Rowan had. But Phillip reminded her so much of that passionate boy she’d known so very briefly, so many years ago. She wondered whether or not Amelia would approve, but she had to believe that she would." Plus the whole Phillip thing seemed a bit out of the blue. (hide spoiler)]

This was such a great book. I even found myself tearing up at times - something I don't do often.

This was so beautiful written. The one thing I struggled with (I think it comes from reading too much Sci-Fi, if that's even possible), is that I kept wondering how Amelia was going to come back in the end, and then had to remind myself this is meant to be realistic, and Amelia wasn't coming back. Such a great novel and well done. It's scary to see how many things I see my students doing that were featured in this book.

My only complaint about this was the lack of reality with the investigation. (view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)]

Possible spoiler

Finished this book and it was easy to read but it just didn't ring true for me. The adult characters seemed to be more immature than their offspring, yet they were successful in their careers? Too far fetched for me, but liked the writing style just not the story being written.

I liked the book, but the plot holes made it hard. I especially found it hard to believe that Kate would never have considered that Amelia's father might not have been who she thought it was.

Some of the behavior from the adults in this book was more shocking to me than the behavior from the teens. No wonder you have a bunch of crappy and rude teenagers running around being complete punks with parents like that. Petty, mean, bitter, jealous and immature people, couldn't possibly be raising their children to become upstanding young people.

Reconstructing Amelia left me a sobbing mess. It also left me feeling angry and frustrated. There were so many people, in one way or another involved with what happened to Amelia, and at the end it felt like no one was accountable for their horrible actions and behavior.

I'm near tears right now. This book was so vividly written. I just...Amelia is a lot like me. There's a lot of pain smushed into a short period of time,and it's like the person you were before can only be a memory. McCreight perfectly captured the feeling of having your first love be a "forbidden" one, and when the people who you care most for misunderstand it all. This book was heartbreaking,gut wrenching, and I don't know if I'll ever have the balls to read it again knowing what it is. Kate's deterioration from the knowledge of what her daughter became is something I genuinely wish my mother could feel now if only before it's too late. Try not to read if you're triggered by self-harm or suicide. Sad thing is, I might reccomend it to you anyways.