Kimberly McCreight – Reconstructing Amelia

I first heard of Kimberly McCreight’s debut novel when the review in Entertainment Weekly called it this year’s Gone Girl, which I very much enjoyed last year.  Given their stellar review, I decided to buy the book and give it a shot, and I am glad I did.  While the comparison to Gone Girl may have been a bit of an oversell, it was an enjoyable read which I finished in less than a week.

Reconstructing Amelia is the tale of a girl whose death has been ruled a suicide and the working mother who pieces together the remains of her life, using texts, Facebook posts, and tweets to find out the truth of what really happened to her daughter.  McCreight does a good job of bringing the reader into 2 different worlds: one of a grieving mother who finds out that her daughter may not have been who she thought she was and the other of a high school girl finding herself out of her element and trying to negotiate her first love and her first exposure to bullying.

Considering this was McCreight’s first published novel, I’ll certainly be interested in seeing what she comes up with next.  If she improves her craft with more experience, it is certainly possible that she may ultimately surpass the bar set by Gillian Flynn and Gone Girl.