A Line in the Dark By Malinda Lo Source Received from the publisher
Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers on October 17, 2017
Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Rating:
Cover image and synopsis from Goodreads:
Jess Wong is Angie Redmond’s best friend. And that’s the most important thing, even if Angie can’t see how Jess truly feels. Being the girl no one quite notices is OK with Jess anyway. While nobody notices her, she’s free to watch everyone else. But when Angie begins to fall for Margot Adams, a girl from the nearby boarding school, Jess can see it coming a mile away. Suddenly her powers of observation are more curse than gift.
As Angie drags Jess further into Margot’s circle, Jess discovers more than her friend’s growing crush. Secrets and cruelty lie just beneath the carefree surface of this world of wealth and privilege, and when they come out, Jess knows Angie won’t be able to handle the consequences.
When the inevitable darkness finally descends, Angie will need her best friend.
I was excited to read this book, thinking that it was going to be a dark or twisty psychological thriller.
I’m writing this a few weeks after I finished reading, and I’ve read a few books since then, so the details are fuzzy in my memory. But I remember that I enjoyed A Line in the Dark and didn’t want to put it down once I started to read.
There is a mystery, but it felt like for the most of the book, the mystery was not the main focus of the story. It was more about Jess and her relationship with her best friend Angie – what Jess feels, how their relationship changes, and Angie’s new girlfriend Margot.
Spoiler warning: the ending, with its abrupt POV shift and “twist” (which seemed more predictable than twisty to me) left me kind of unsatisfied; I didn’t understand the need for the POV shift and it was a little jarring. It also felt rushed to me, the way the mystery was pushed to the forefront and the whodunit uncovered so suddenly. End of spoiler.
Overall, this was a good pick and I enjoyed it. It was my first time reading Malinda Lo and I want to go back and read her earlier work! Despite my feelings about the ending, I would recommend this for sure. It was well written, with complex characters and I simply couldn’t put it down.
Buy a copy for yourself!
