Golden

by Jessi Kirby

Love, tragedy, and mystery converge in this compelling novel that Booklist called "rich in its characterizations, deep in its reflections about teenage life, and compelling as a mystery" in a starred review.

Seventeen-year-old Parker Frost has never taken the road less traveled. Valedictorian and quintessential good girl, she's about to graduate high school without ever having kissed her crush or broken the rules. So when fate drops a clue in her lap-one that might be the key to unraveling a town mystery-she decides to take a chance.

Julianna Farnetti and Shane Cruz are remembered as the golden couple of Summit Lakes High-perfect in every way, meant to be together forever. But Julianna's journal tells a different story-one of doubts about Shane and a forbidden romance with an older, artistic guy. These are the secrets that were swept away with her the night that Shane's jeep plunged into an icy river, leaving behind a grieving town and no bodies to bury.

Reading Julianna's journal gives Parker the courage to start to really live-and it also gives her reasons to question what really happened the night of the accident. Armed with clues from the past, Parker enlists the help of her best friend, Kat, and Trevor, her longtime crush, to track down some leads. The mystery ends up taking Parker places that she never could have imagined. And she soon finds that taking the road less traveled makes all the difference.

• ISBN10: 1442452188
• ISBN13: 9781442452183
• Publish Date: 6 May 2014 (first published 14 May 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

It's always good to have a plan, but what if that plan was not of your own making? What if you outgrew that plan? These are some of the ideas, that Kirby explored via a compelling story set both the present and the past, which kept me completely captivated.

Parker had spent so much time and energy working towards her mother's goals, that she missed out on many of those high school rites of passage. Then, the journal of a now deceased alumna fell into her lap, and she found herself questioning everything she had been doing, as well as wondering if it was too late for her to change her path.

Both past and present storylines delivered lots of feels for me. They mystery of the golden couple, plus Parker's growing confusion kept me turning the pages. Kirby really took Parker on quite a physical and emotional journey. It was really satisfying watching her grow and change, and I do think she was better for it, in the end.

It has been a while since I read one of Jessi Kirby's books, I forgot how much I loved them! She threw in an interesting twist, and then she did something else that was surprising, and after that, she went for the triple, and I enjoyed each and every turn this story took. I experienced many feelsplosions over the course of this story, and am grateful for the opportunity to shed some happy tears for these characters.

Overall: Compelling and emotionally satisfying.

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[Bianca]

Chance is everywhere. It’s also what life is made of. It’s all around us, but most of the time we never see it working. We turn left instead of right, we take the stairs instead of the elevator, cross the street for no apparent reason. Our lives are made of these little moments that somehow add up, and sometimes, if we look back, we can see chance at work. When we turned left we found something we were looking for, when we took the stairs we avoided something not meant for us. When we crossed the street, we met the person who was. Looking back it’s easy to see all those things. To connect the dots and see that it was actually those things that made all the difference.

*reread
— A coming-of-age tale about the choices we make, the chances we don’t take, and how “we’re all more than the person we show to everyone else.” This book is still golden.

[Kelly]

http://www.divabooknerd.com/2014/09/golden-by-jessi-kirby.html
Golden was a brilliant contemporary coming of age novel with a touch of intrigue and romance. It follows the storyline of Parker, who in turn is following the final thoughts of Julianna before she was tragically killed. The two girls are similar in their drive and aspirations, but with the difference that a chance meeting allowed Julianna to see the world beyond black and white and hope for something more than small town life. Julianna's journal is incredibly engaging and like Parker, I felt myself completely absorbed.

While Parker allows herself to become consumed by Julianna's words, her own life begins to pass her by. Her best friend Kat wants Parker to take chances and become the free spirit who can live beyond her perfect record and the expectations of her dominant mother. But her biggest risk concerns Trevor. Although friends, the chemistry and tension between them is ready to ignite. He uses humour to express his feelings for her, and Parker believes that it's nothing more than teasing, but secretly pines for her friend.

But it's Julianna's story that had me on edge. Unpredictable and surprising. While at times my heart ached for Parker and all that she had missed throughout her seventeen years. She's both realistic and relatable. From the expectations of her mother, Parker so desperately needing her approval, to the confusion of feelings where Trevor is concerned. Jessi Kirby entwined two storylines of young women that readers can relate to, and provides a surprising and satisfying ending that readers will rejoice. Simply brilliant.

[celinenyx]

Good. Kind of a quiet story about a girl finding herself and about making the best out of your life. I wasn't entirely convinced by the romantic subplot, but I like the general message.

[Joséphine]

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

Golden left me a little torn. On one hand, I really enjoyed it but on the other, it left me feeling unmoved. The prose was beautiful. The introspectiveness of it pulled me right in when I opened the books and read the first few pages.

Eventually, the prose wasn’t enough anymore. Not when the plot became thicker and there were promises of more things to come. These promises were left unfulfilled for me. I predicted what the ending would be by the time I had read about a third of the book. The more I continued reading after that, the more restless I felt because my suspicions were confirmed one after the other. Had I expected a day-to-day kind of story or one that was more about the philosophical ruminations of life, I wouldn’t have minded so much. As it is, I was left cold by the time I closed that book.

As a story-within-a-story, I must say, Golden definitely delivers. Parker came across a journal that Julianna, a former student at her high school had written ten years prior. Since Parker was to mail this whole stack of journals to their rightful owners, that was to be expected. Except, Julianna was dead. Julianna and her boyfriend, Shane had been in a car accident at Summit Lake, their bodies never to be recovered, as the streams must have washed them away on that fateful winter day.

Basically, Julianna’s journal entries propelled the plot forward. Her worries were all too familiar to Parker. Parker too was a graduating senior, afraid of what she would encounter once she was done with high school. Would she make it to Stanford? What about Kate? Her best friend didn’t want to leave town after high school. Things were going to be vastly different. Reading Julianna’s journal thus brought out a whole lot more worries for Parker.

Was Parker making the most out of her life? Sure, she was the valedictorian. She had made it to the final round for a scholarship selection. But she wasn’t sure if that was enough. Not with Kat constantly on her case about what a boring and dependable person she was. Things needed to be different, so Kat challenged to do one unexpected thing before graduation.

Then there was Trevor. For years he had been trying to flirt with Parker. Yet Parker didn’t pay him all too much attention. Somehow things changed though and Parker started noticing him. Well, with Kat’s prodding. Kat was convinced that Parker was interested in Trevor, just that she wasn’t admitting it. Either way, their budding romance didn’t interest me all too much. Sure, it wasn’t instalove per se, since they had known each other for years. Yet, I didn’t see much of a basis for it either, since Parker didn’t exactly show any interest in investing herself even when Kat pushed her to it.

Bottom line, if you’re looking for good prose, then Golden should be on your radar as your next read.


This review is also available on dudettereads.com.

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews

I liked Golden, but I didn't LOVE it

I think the #1 problem was that I over-hyped Golden for myself. It's the book that everyone loved, and I wanted to love, so I went into it expecting to ADORE it, but that didn't quite happen, so I felt the disappointment all the more fiercely.

Right off the bat, I could tell that Golden was so incredibly wordy. There are huge paragraphs that basically all say the same thing, just with tons of extra words. Literally, sometimes one paragraph would describe an emotion, then the next paragraph would describe the same emotion from a slightly different angle. Don't get me wrong, the book was well written, but that overly wordy and descriptive writing style is not for me. It causes me to get antsy and start skimming, especially when the plot surrounds this big mystery. I'm just like, "Let's get to the point! I want to see the mystery unravel please!"

But if you like wordy descriptions and an almost poetic writing style, then you'll probably love it.

The romance was slightly lacking all around

In Golden we have two romance stories: the one between Parker and Trevor, and the one between Julianna and Shane/Orion. While I thought that both stories were interesting, they were both a little distant and shallow...but for very different reasons.

I considered Parker and Trevor's romance to be more of a backburner subplot. It's far from the highlight of the story. It's just there, on the side, not really involved much... which was a bummer, because it was kind of sweet!

Then there was the Julianna, Shane, and Orion love triangle. I loved this story! I totally understood why it was a love triangle, and it worked! The story itself was interesting and captivating. But I still think it was a bit distant and shallow.. why? Because although Julianna's story was basically the plot of the book, Julianna was not the main character. We just learn about her story through a journal.. So it's in the past, it's distant, it's not really right up in front. So as a result, I felt a bit detached, and it didn't dig as deeply as it could have if it was the main character's story.

But I did love the messages and the life lessons

I think one of the great things about Golden is how sometimes things fail miserably, but sometimes they do have a way of working themselves out. I loved how the book explored both angles.

Golden is really a story about finding your place in life. Or not even finding your place, but getting on track to finding your place.. just reaching that starting point. I think that's something every person in the world can relate to! It's hard to take control of your life, and it's hard to even know where you want to go in life! Golden explores both of those things in an incredibly relatable way that made it really fun to read.

Reading this book will probably make you reflect a lot on your own life, which is something I think is always so much fun to do while reading!

The mystery was predictable, but exciting

Ah, the mystery. SO PREDICTABLE! I literally guessed the entire thing right at the beginning.. and I was right. But that being said, it was still fun to read. Often times the best part isn't the ending itself, but how it unravels. Although I was pretty confident I knew how it would end, I wanted to see how it would end. I was so eager to see everything fall into place!

I am disappointed that we didn't see more of the ending though. Although we can assume that Julianna and Orion reconnected, I wanted to actually see it happen! I wanted to live in that moment with them.. but we didn't. We just hear from a third party that Orion up and left after getting a phone call, so we can easily assume that he ran off to go be with Julianna... but I wanted to watch the reunion!

Overall, the book was good but I hoped it would be better

Golden was a good book. Period. I think I just wanted it to be AMAZING and LIFE CHANGING, but for me it wasn't really either.. so the disappointment hit me twice as hard as it normally would have.

[Rowena]

So in this book, Parker Frost is a senior in high school and she’s gearing up for a speech she’s got to give to win a scholarship to Stanford. She wants to get that scholarship, mostly to get her Mom off her back but also because she’s worked very hard for it. Her best friend isn’t as brainy as she is but Parker loves her anyway. On top of the scholarship thing, she has this fierce crush on Trevor Collins. She’s had that crush for so very long but for some reason, she won’t go there. Maybe it has to do with the fact that all the girls want him and he hasn’t shied away from their attention but from that very first scene with them together, the chemistry sizzles and I thought it was adorable.

Parker is a T.A. for a teacher who has his senior students write in a notebook about who they are now and what they hope to be in the future. After ten years, he mails the notebooks to those students and Parker is tasked with putting the next batch of envelopes together for mailing out. While she’s going through the envelopes with the notebooks, she comes across the notebook that belonged to a young girl who died ten years ago named Julianna Farnetti. Julianna Farnetti was part of the golden couple back in the day. She was memorialized all throughout town so everyone knows who she was. She was Shane Cruz’s girlfriend and though their bodies were never found, they never returned to town so the memorial went up. There are billboards up with their pictures and everything. Parker grew up knowing all about it, she even remembers her father being part of the search and rescue volunteer group that went out looking for the couple. So when she comes across the notebook, she has no idea what to do with it and with her best friend’s voice fresh in her mind, telling her to do something memorable and daring before they graduate…she takes the notebook. And she reads it. And she finds out things that nobody knew about Julianna Farnetti. Except for Orion.

This book takes place as Parker is trying to read as much as she can about Julianna Farnetti in this notebook that she wrote in years and years ago and it also takes place while Parker is finding out what she wants for her future and not just what her Mom wants for her future.

Jessi Kirby is a great writer. She writes great stories with great characters that really come alive for me when I’m reading her books. Every time I pick up a Kirby book, I know that I’m going to be just as invested in the book like I was with every other book that I’ve read by her. I’m a total fan of her work and I hope she writes forever.

In this book, Parker was a really likable protagonist and watching her try to figure out what was happening to her and what happened to Julianna and Shane had me turning the pages so fast it was hard to keep up with myself. The romance is extremely light but it’s there and it adds to an already impressive story that will be a hit with fans of Kirby’s previous works and fans of contemporary YA.

[jnikkir]

3.5 stars - review to come

[inlibrisveritas]

Golden is a book that really resonated with me. It’s one of those really rare life changing books that sticks with you no matter how much time has passed.

The main character is Parker Frost, a high school senior and a repressed poet. She lives under the thumb of her driven mother and the pressure of being the next scholarship recipient, and while I don’t have over bearing parents and I didn’t have some board watching my every move I can relate. Senior year was so absorbing for me I barely even remember it…there was no prom (I did go to a military ball), no incredible trips or parties…it was just school. So in that way I connected with Parker quite a bit as she unknowingly begins on her journey to finding herself and the the truth behind the golden couple. She blossoms as a character and by the end of the book I was completely proud of her for her steps to being the person she wanted to be. Her best friend Kat, and Travis are also fantastic friends for her. They push her to open up more and though they support her every decision they want her to be happy. They had their ups and downs but overall they were a great support system for Parker.

The journal is kind of a character in itself really. It sheds light on a couple that everyone idolizes because they died untimely deaths and have been painted as saints, and it beings to flesh out their past and how things truly were. I loved this whole mystery aspect and I loved the lessons learned from it.

The biggest thing about this book is not only does it tell you to live life to the fullest, it plants that seed in your mind. For weeks after reading this one I still had the quote ‘tell me what will you do with your one wild and precious life?’ bouncing around in my head. I’ve heard that quote before many times, but for some reason this book just hit it home.

I’m honestly incredibly happy that I read this one and that I didn’t pass over it like I was tempted to do. It’s so much more than it seems and I really recommend it to those who like stand-alone contemporary.