Title: The Last Good Day of the Year
Author: Jessica Warman
Publication: May 19, 2015
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books
Source: Netgalley
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Ten years ago, in the early hours of New Year’s Day, seven-year-old Samantha and her next door neighbor, Remy, watched as a man broke into Sam’s home and took her younger sister, Turtle, from her sleeping bag. Remy and Sam, too afraid to intervene at the time, later identified the man as Sam’s sister Gretchen’s much older ex-boyfriend, Steven, who was sent to prison for Turtle’s murder.
Now, Sam’s shattered family is returning to her childhood home in an effort to heal. As long-buried memories begin to surface, Sam wonders if she and Remy accurately registered everything they saw. The more they re-examine the events of that fateful night, the more questions they discover about what really happened to Turtle.
Master storyteller Jessica Warman keeps readers guessing in this arresting page-turner.
REVIEW:
Let me start with a little note about the cover of this book. It’s creepy. That is what drew me to it right away. I love a good creepy, thrill-inducing, book, so this peaked my interest. I went in having high expectations and no knowledge of Jessica Warman’s writing style, having never read her work before.
“The Last Good Day of the Year” by Jessica Warman follows Sam, a teenage girl who witness the abduction of her baby sister years before, but now it may be the wrong person ended up behind bars. Sounds intriguing? It was. I loved how secretive it was until the very end. I would have never guessed the outcome. I do feel that this book jumped around a lot and left me confused many times as to where and when the story was at, even with the year labels. Unfortunately I also felt as though the story took a long time to get to the actual point. It wasn’t until about three quarters through the book when it finally got to the point that there was a possibility the wrong person got arrested for the crime. The first large part of the book was just flashbacks and how people were dealing now. In that sense, I felt the book was a bit deceiving in the synopsis because it makes it seem the entire story is about the wrong person being behind bars and the killer still being out there.
Aside from my slight dislike of the flow of the story and the description, the writing was well done and the characters were people everyone could relate to. Your every day family, only with their entire lives uprooted by a horrific act. The emotions were very well portrayed for each character and shows how all people deal with things differently. While this may not have been my absolute favorite book, I would definitely recommend it to others and would be very interested to read more from Warman. She has a great writing style and creative ideas that haven’t been done over and over. Looking forward to more from her.
Make sure to pick up “The Last Good Day of the Year” by Jessica Warman online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can also add it to your TO READS list on Goodreads.
Swing over to Jessica Warman’s website HERE and see what she is up to. You can also check out descriptions of all her other released books, “Between”, “Breathless”, “Beautiful Lies”, and “Where the Truth Lies”.
