Between by Jessica Warman

Title: Between

Author: Jessica Warman

Publication Date: August 2, 2011

Publisher: Walker & Company

Pages: 454

Introduction

On the night of her 18th birthday, Elizabeth "Liz" Valchar dies. Stuck between life and death, she finds her body knocking against her family's boat long before her friends find her. Liz can't remember anything from her life, or her death. Everything has holes. She has no idea how she managed to drown on her 18th birthday, surrounded by her friends. The only way she can figure it out is by waiting for the memories to hit her, and by silently observing her family and friends as they grieve. 

Luckily, she isn't alone. With her in this limbo like state is Alex Berg, a boy who was hit by a car a year prior to Liz's death. They had no connection in life. Liz was popular, and had everything anybody could ever want. Alex was introverted, from a modest family, and spent his school days trying to avoid being bullied. They have no idea why they're together, but slowly, together, they're going to figure out what happened on the nights of their deaths.

Characters

Almost all of the characters are very difficult to like, which is usually what happens when all pf the characters are spoiled rich kids. They are the classic rich kid characters who are all troubled in some way, but I found a lot of their troubles fell a little flat. They are all very real and tough problems, but most of them weren't delved into deep enough for me to really care about them. As a result, a good number of the characters were never very interesting to me, and a couple of them felt completely pointless to the story.

Liz did a lot of growing and maturing throughout the book--a result of seeing herself in her memories--and seeing her grow into a less stuck up version of her was wonderful.

Mystery/Ending

I had predictions about the ending very early on in the book. probably less than halfway through, and when I got to the end, all of my predictions turned out to be right. The ending felt a little predictable to me, and because of this, I wouldn't label it the most effective mystery. However, even though I figured out what was going to happen early on in the book, I still enjoyed reading it as it all unfolded.

Romance

I was very pleased that no romance happened between Alex and Liz. I admit, I really expected that that was what was going to happen when I first started the book, but I think if it did happen, it would have made the story entirely different than what it was and I'm really glad that it didn't go that way.

Conclusion

Despite not truly connecting with many of the supporting characters and essentially figuring out the mystery long before the ending, I did find this book entertaining to read, and I think I will try to read more from Warman. This book does feature a few mature themes, and does depict disordered eating as a large part of Liz's life, so if that is triggering to you, I would stay away from this book.