Unraveling Review

Unraveling
by Elizabeth Norris
Expected Publication Date:
From Goodreads:

Two days before the start of her junior year, seventeen-year-old Janelle Tenner is hit by a pickup truck and killed—as in blinding light, scenes of her life flashing before her, and then nothing. Except the next thing she knows, she's opening her eyes to find Ben Michaels, a loner from her high school whom Janelle has never talked to, leaning over her. And even though it isn't possible, she knows—with every fiber of her being—that Ben has somehow brought her back to life.

But her revival, and Ben's possible role in it, is only the first of the puzzles that Janelle must solve. While snooping in her FBI agent father's files for clues about her accident, she uncovers a clock that seems to be counting down to something—but to what? And when someone close to Janelle is killed, she can no longer deny what's right in front of her: Everything that's happened—the accident, the murder, the countdown clock, Ben's sudden appearance in her life—points to the end of life as she knows it. And as the clock ticks down, she realizes that if she wants to put a stop to the end of the world, she's going to need to uncover Ben's secrets—and keep from falling in love with him in the process.

From debut author Elizabeth Norris comes this shattering novel of one girl's fight to save herself, her world, and the boy she never saw coming.

My Thoughts: I instantly connected to this book and it's main character.  I loved the writing style, and the obvious connections and references to X-Files.

Despite the fact that I figured out the identity of the baddie pretty early on, the book still threw some curve balls at me.  One in particular comes about half way through the book, and it was a shocker (no, Kim, not like the wtf moment in Fingersmith, or even as big as the one in the book I read for readathon).  Another one at the end actually disappointed me and I thought it was unnecessary even if it was realistic.  

Towards the end the book lost a little of my attention, and I think it was because I was mad at Janelle for putting Jared and Alex aside in favor of Ben.  It just didn't ring true for who I thought Janelle was, and it just made the Alex storyline that much harder to take at the end.


Unraveling also has a lot of swear words mixed in.  Yes, teens swear, but sometimes it honestly felt like it was too much and a little forced.  Normally I don't even blink at curse words in YA, it's a hell of a lot more realistic than having the kids speak like they're in an episode of Sesame Street, but I actually found myself rolling my eyes at some of the f bombs that were dropping. But it's a fairly minor complaint.

The beginning of the book is fairly attention grabbing, and I knew right away that I was going to like this book.  Since it's in the summary, this isn't spoilerish, but in the beginning right as Janelle is getting hit by the truck she makes the point that she always thought she was a fairly observant person and so she finds some humor in getting hit, because she never saw it coming.

I liked that the book wasn't afraid to be a little sci-fi.  I liked that it wasn't a huge stretch of the imagination that Janelle could become so involved with her FBI dad's case.  Overall this was just a great read for me, and something just a little different.  The writing and dialogue was fun and interesting, and I will definitely be reading more by this author!

Unraveling gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

The cover gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

I like the cover, although I think it makes Janelle's hair look a little on the red side, which isn't how she's described.  Ben is exactly how I pictured him though!