Synopsis:
Abbie Fray has moved with her family from Sydney to Derrington, a country town where everybody knows everybody and the mobile reception sucks. She’s left behind her best friend, her school, and her favourite bakery. She thinks her life can’t get any worse.
Then she makes a terrifying discovery.
Abbie looks just like Rebecca O’Reilley, a girl who was brutally murdered in Derrington a year earlier. And it doesn’t take long before Abbie learns there’s more connecting them than just appearance.
Not even a budding romance with the kind, quirky and gorgeous Zeke is enough to stop Abbie’s curiosity about the murder developing into a dangerous obsession.
Who is sending Abbie anonymous threats?
And why does she keep dreaming about the scene of Becky’s death?
As questions mount, Abbie only knows one thing for sure: she must find out what really happened the night Rebecca O’Reilley was killed.
But what if the truth is closer – and deadlier – than she could possibly imagine?
Review:
The book’s description makes it pretty difficult to understand from the beginning the type of story you’re dealing with. Is it a thriller? A fantasy? A paranormal mystery? What I definitely knew is that Mirror Me will float somewhere in the large category of Young Adult books and since I had a few years long obsession with this genre, I was curious to go back to it after so long and see if it’s still my cup of tea.
I guess Mirror Me was a lucky choice, because I honestly didn’t roll my eyes as many times as I was imagining I would be. Yes, it has a few details that seem a bit too much, but if I’m being honest, I think those have to do more with the typical teenage mentality in general rather than with the author’s writing.
Despite starting from a clearly improbable plot, the storyline develops into a very realistic way compared to the general tendency of YA novels. No absent parents, no wild adventures, no sudden crazy love hits (a mild crush is definitely acceptable and expected), no huge dramas. The storyline is calm and down-to-earth, with all the ups and downs that you’re expecting when it comes to a life changing move across the country during the most challenging years of a teen. A teen who now has to deal with an additional issue that turns her even more into an outsider.
I did like the pragmatic relationships between the characters, both when it comes to family and friends, I liked the no-nonsense portrait of the heroine and how balanced her behavior remains, although she’s confronted with more and more challenges and she often feels that she’s losing her mind.
The twist in the last chapters doesn’t come as much of a surprise. The author inserts enough clues during the pages to give you a strong suspicion about who might be the culprit. But the background story that represents the real motive is astonishing and impossible to guess beforehand.
Entertaining without becoming addictive, Mirror Me will be a light read that you will probably enjoy. It doesn’t have any imperfections that would make it an unpleasant story, but in the same time, it also doesn’t come with anything spectacular to make you fall in love with it.
My Weekly Book 