Pubblicato in Italia con in titolo Girl in Snow. Una piccola cittadina del Colorado è sconvolta dall’omicidio di una giovane ragazza. Ma, al centro di questa affascinante storia, sono tre personaggi connessi in un modo o nell’altro all’omicidio.
One early morning, in a small town in Colorado, the body of a girl is found in the snow. The girl’s name is Lucinda Hayes and she is the popular high-school girl loved by everyone, or almost everyone. Lucinda’s murder affects more than just her family. It affects Cameron, the social-awkward boy, who spied on her from outside her bedroom window. Her murder affects Russ, one of the policemen investigating Lucinda’s murder, who promised Cameron’s father to protect his son. And it affects Jade who hated Lucinda because she stole her best-friend and her babysitting job.
While Russ tries to keep Cameron out of the investigation, the latter tries to remember where he was the night of Lucinda’s murder but he can’t remember. In the meantime, Jade, who can’t feel sad for Lucinda’s murder, is writing a screenplay called “What You Want to Say But Can’t Without Being a Dick”, about what she said to people and what she’d wished she said.
The novel is very character-driven. The story is told from three different points of views – Cameron, Jade, and Russ – and the plot focuses more on each individual character than on the murder. The murder (and Lucinda) are mostly in the background, like a subplot, and often don’t seem central to the story. For this reason, I didn’t really feel connected with the character of Lucinda and I was more interested in the three protagonists’ stories than in her murder.
The story is slow-paced as the author focuses mostly on the characters’ feelings, their fears, and their hopes so there wasn’t much action and there are no violent scenes, although a few suspenseful and dramatic ones.
I loved the few intermissions created by Jade’s screenplay that appear every chapters and they are ironic and engaging. Girl In Snow didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat, but, all in all, this novel is captivating, intriguing and beautifully written.
