The Accident Season

by Moira Fowley-Doyle

[Heather]

I loved the central mystery in this book.  Why is October accident season for this family?  Looking for that answer kept me reading through this book.

The mystery deepens when Cara is looking through pictures and realizes that a girl from her school named Elsie is in all of her pictures - even the ones taken outside the country.  When she goes to ask her about it at school, Elsie can't be found and no one remembers her.

I liked the idea that there is a typewriter in the library where people type confessions and put them in a box.  They are used in an art installation at the end of each year.

But this book also hit one of my personal pet peeves.  I hate stories that center around teenage drinking.  I think that kids arranging their lives around opportunities to drink is so amazingly stupid that it takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the story.  The kids in this book can't seem to do anything if they aren't drinking at the same time.  It isn't just that I'm an old fogey.  I thought it was incredibly stupid and boring when I was a teenager too.  I would have DNFed this one for that if I wasn't intrigued about who Elsie was and the origins of the accident season.

 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story