On a ordinary morning at Glendale High, shots are heard coming from a locked bathroom in the north wing. It takes the police some time to get the only conscious girl, Josie, to open the door; she at first insists that she cannot move but later it appears that her leg wound is mainly superficial. The other two girls are not so lucky, Kat is dead and Perri, who was apparently the shooter, is unconscious from a bullet that has ripped through her jaw.
Kat, Perri and Josie have been best friends - virtually inseparable for the last five years. The book takes us back to before the girls first knew each other and narrates their home lives and how their friendship came about. Illustrated by incidents throughout their childhood , the characters of each of the girls is slowly and skilfully revealed. The focus of the investigation is more about the complexity of the relationship of these three girls than the actual shooting. Schoolteacher Alexa is convinced that Eve Mulie has information, and is determined to provide the opportunity for Eve to confide in her. With the narration from several points of view the reader is able to sift through the verbal evidence to uncover just why and what did happen between these three girls.
The setting is a suburb of Baltimore, which has been developed mainly by Kat=s father. But there are still some outlying farms the children of which are looked down upon.. In all a quite fascinating insight into the lives of three teenagers from different backgrounds brought up with different values, that eventually results in tragedy.
Laurence Bouvard is marvellous as her verbal interpretation of the characters
adds an extra dimension to the writing. The narration in my opinion adds significantly
to the book which relies mainly on the three characters.
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Lizzie Hayes