Already Gone by Bridget E. Baker

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Mystery, Contemporary Fiction
Content: Clean



Lacy Shelton and her sister Hope couldn't be more different, despite being less than a year apart in age. Lacy is captain of the debate team, poised to be Valedictorian of the high school and waiting for an admission letter from Yale any day. Hope is captain of the swim team, but will be happy if she gets into community college.

Hope has taken everything Lacy ever wanted, from pacifiers to high heels. But Lacy won't let that happen again, not this time. She won't let Hope take the new guy in school, and she sure as heck won’t let Hope ruin her chances with Yale. Until a shocking death changes all of Lacy's plans.

Alternating between Lacy's and Hope's points of view, Already Gone pieces together a tense puzzle of sisterhood, betrayal, mistakes, and ultimately forgiving someone who can be gone in a blink.

Bridget E. Baker is fast becoming a favorite author of mine. After reading her YA post-apocalyptic trilogy and her cute Christmas romance novel for adults and enjoying those I didn't hesitate to try this book. This is another YA novel, but this time around it's a mystery/suspense/contemporary fiction type story. One thing that really stands out to me is how versatile this author is. She does a great job with each of these genres.

I'll say right off that this story is a slow build and the mystery and the suspense are very mild. You're just reading both Lacy and Hope's accounts of past events and waiting to find out what went down to cause Lacy to be in a court-mandated psychiatrist's office. The details are very engrossing despite the slow burn of the story. I'll admit I was expecting a lot of danger and ominous events, but somehow this book still did not disappoint me. Despite the lack of any real danger or suspense, the story pretty much grabbed me right from the beginning and I couldn't put it down. That's saying a lot for a book about teens in high school! I thought I was done reading those types of stories, but I'm not sorry I read this one.

There was a twist that I did not see coming as well and that made the reading experience even better. There are quite a few themes touched on in this book, but I don't want to spoil the book so I won't talk about them here. This is a well thought out story about two sisters at odds, who also love each other, and in the end this ends up being a somewhat tragic but very sweet story. I highly recommend if you like contemporary teen fiction.

Thanks to the author for providing me with an advanced copy of this book for review.