Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews
4.5 Stars
Premeditated was everything I hoped it would be! Dinah goes "under cover" at a fancy prep school to find the boy who caused Clare to slit her wrists. She carefully observes the students to find the culprit, his friends, the ones he cares about.. so she can bring him down.
What does he want? Find it and take it. What's his dream? Find out and crush it. Who does he love? Find out and make them hate him.
There were so many parts of this book that I adored. I loved Dinah as a character. She's smart, funny, and imperfect. But the characters who really stood out for me were her Uncle Paul and her father. They were AMAZING parents and I loved some of their lines.
Dinah? What's going on in— Oh, you're smothering Brucey. There's superglue under the sink if you break something.
—Uncle Paul
But truly, all the characters in this book were brilliant in different ways. I loved to absolutely loathe Dinah's horrendous mother. I loved to cheer with pride when Dinah's dad finally started standing up to her mother. I felt guilty and unsure when I started falling for the culprit..
Dinah and her friends start small and then build their way up to make the culprit's life a living hell. They didn't want some big, quick reveal. They wanted to slowly rip his life apart from the inside so that he was just as tortured as poor Claire. But even as this is happening, we don't know all the details surrounding Claire until much later. Exactly what happened with her is slowly unraveled over the course of the book.
The one thing that was a bit of a disappointment was how predictable the ending was. I figured it out no later than 50% (it might have been a bit earlier—I don't remember exactly). Although that didn't leave me bored with the rest of the book, it was starting to get a tiny bit frustrating when I knew exactly what would happen but Dinah STILL hadn't figured it out. I think that if I didn't know exactly what was going to happen so early on, this book would have gotten that extra half star. An epic twist at the end would have really put the cherry on top of a great book, but it didn't feel like a twist to me when I saw it coming.
Premeditated is so strong and so powerful. It's about revenge, self discovery, family problems, predators, coping with loss, and so much more. We really see Dinah grow and develop as a character. And the end... THE END! Well, it's not quite the end but it's a moment before the end.. it had me drowning in tears and refusing to believe that it actually happened. I kept wanting some sort of sci-fi miracle because it was just too sad! :(
I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants a strong contemporary book about friendship, family, and revenge. There's a lot more to it than just a revenge story, so go into it expecting a bit more. But that's one of the things that makes it so great! If only the ending was a bit less predictable... :P