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.
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.
