Burning Blue Review

From Goodreads

Burning Blue
by Paul Griffin
Expected Publication: 10.25.12
From Goodreads:

How far would you go for love, beauty, and jealousy?

When Nicole Castro, the most beautiful girl in her wealthy New Jersey high school, is splashed with acid on the left side of her perfect face, the whole world takes notice. But quiet loner Jay Nazarro does more than that--he decides to find out who did it. Jay understands how it feels to be treated like a freak, and he also has a secret: He's a brilliant hacker. But the deeper he digs, the more danger he's in--and the more he falls for Nicole. Too bad everyone is turning into a suspect, including Nicole herself.

Award-winning author Paul Griffin has written a high-stakes, soulful mystery about the meaning--and dangers--of love and beauty.

Midnight Thoughts

~My absolute favorite part of this book was the definition of Puke Trigger (for example, if you kiss a drunk girl right before she pukes, than you were the Puke Trigger).

~Jay is a computer hacker, and I can barely manage to post a review online, so I found everything he did with computers/smart phones/etc to be believable but I don't know if it is. 

~Burning Blue reminds me that we are very much living in a Gossip Girl world where everything you do and say can be recorded at anytime.  This makes being a teenager even suckier.  Can you imagine your most embarrassing high school moment forever streaming on youtube?

~I was very surprised by how into the mystery I got drawn.  Even though I signed up for this blog tour I didn't realize that it would be mainly from Jay's pov.  Griffin does a great job in creating a main character that both male and female readers can relate to.

~Really the only thing I didn't enjoy about the book is the fact that the running joke was that Jay's last name rhymes with Sbarro (a restaurant), everyone mentions it and I found it even more annoying than Jay claimed to. 

~I liked Jay discovering who Nicole really is, she's more than just a beautiful girl who got burned, she's got hidden depth. 

~Nicole was not whiner.  She was kind of kick ass.  I would not have handled being burned by acid half as well as she did, and trust me, I am no model.

~The deeper into the mystery Jay sunk, the more mystery there was.  Everyone was a suspect at one point or another, and I liked all the hidden agendas people had, because real life people are complicated.

~The ending surprised me, because I did not pick up on an earlier clue.  Even though it surprised me, it didn't come out of left field, it all made sense... well, as much as dousing someone with acid in the face can make sense.

~Favorite quote (keep in mind that this is from the ARC and may change):

"Son, you don't get to be fifty-six-looking-sixty-six, twice divorced, forty pounds overweight, and alcoholic by being an idiot." - Jay's "Uncle" Pete

~I would have liked a bit more of the book through Nicole's eyes, especially her visits to the kids in the hospital.  And her moody housekeeper, loved her!

~A big part of why I wanted to read Burning Blue was because of the model who's face got cut by her crazy landlord in the 1980's and made into a TV movie. 

Burning Blue gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

**I received a copy of this arc through Around the World ARC Tours in exchange for my honest review.  All opinion, wit and snark are my own. **