Title: The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die
Standalone
Author: April Henry
Publish date: June 11th 2013 by Henry Holt and Co
Source: ARC received from the publisher
Buy it from: Amazon
Goodreads summary:
“Take her out back and finish her off.”
She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she is, or why. All she knows when she comes to in a ransacked cabin is that there are two men arguing over whether or not to kill her.
And that she must run.
In her riveting style, April Henry crafts a nail-biting thriller involving murder, identity theft, and biological warfare. Follow Cady and Ty (her accidental savior turned companion), as they race against the clock to stay alive.
Review:
It seems that, with a couple noticeable exceptions, I’m hard to convince with contemporary YA Thrillers, and unfortunately, The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry did not succeed in convincing me. We started off with a pleasingly fast-paced scene, and the stakes were immediately high– The main character comes to from unconsciousness without a memory and overhears men planning to kill her.
For me– and perhaps this is due to the lack of memory she’s experiencing– I felt an incredible disconnect from the main character in The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die. I understood that she had bigger things to focus on, but I didn’t even get a sense of her personality.
There were a couple of things that had me frowny-facing on the diversity and/or judgment sector. The main character makes assumptions on a couple of things that irritated me– assumptions that, unless I missed something, didn’t have any real basis when she makes them.
FINALLY, the main character’s parents bothered me in the end. I had a hard time believing that, based on the way they’re portrayed, that they’d basically send their daughter off into danger, BUT there you have it.
The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die is a short read and I feel like many things, such as the disconnect, could have been fixed by expanding on things a bit. It would have hooked me more if I felt more of the emotions of the main character, but the focus seemed to be mostly on plot and little on character.
Need a second opinion?
“Though I felt like the resolution came a little too hard, too fast, I do think that Henry has managed to write a book that is going to delight readers in search of a quick, easy action story.” –Alexa Loves Books
“You have to be in the right mood when reading, but isn’t that the way it is with any book really?” –Great Imaginations
“April Henry was able to capture me from the first page and only released me on the last page.” –Maji Bookshelf
