Title: Far From You Author: Tess Sharpe
Published: April 8, 2014
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller, Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 352
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice.
The first time, she's fourteen, and escapes a near-fatal car accident with scars, a bum leg, and an addiction to Oxy that'll take years to kick.
The second time, she's seventeen, and it's no accident. Sophie and her best friend Mina are confronted by a masked man in the woods. Sophie survives, but Mina is not so lucky. When the cops deem Mina's murder a drug deal gone wrong, casting partial blame on Sophie, no one will believe the truth: Sophie has been clean for months, and it was Mina who led her into the woods that night for a meeting shrouded in mystery.
After a forced stint in rehab, Sophie returns home to a chilly new reality. Mina's brother won't speak to her, her parents fear she'll relapse, old friends have become enemies, and Sophie has to learn how to live without her other half. To make matters worse, no one is looking in the right places and Sophie must search for Mina's murderer on her own. But with every step, Sophie comes closer to revealing all: about herself, about Mina and about the secret they shared.
17-year-old Sophie Winters seems to attract near-death experiences. First there was the car crash when she was 14, then, 4 months ago, a masked man shot Sophie’s best friend, Mina, right in front of her. After spending 3 months in rehab, Sophie comes back to her small Northern California town with one mission: finding Mina’s killer.
Though even the best murder-mysteries often fail to capture my interest, I loved Tess Sharpe’s debut because it wasn’t a typical mystery at all. Far From You does have elements of suspense and investigation, but beneath that, the author layers in other issues such as drug addiction, grief, and sexual identity. In spite of my expectations, my interest was completely captured and sustained from beginning to end.
Sophie’s narration in Far From You is blunt and to-the-point, which works very well for the mystery aspect of the plot, though at the same time, it doesn’t reveal much about Sophie herself. I finished reading this book very satisfied with the story and the themes, but not with a concrete grasp of who Sophie really was. I certainly know things about her, but not necessarily who she was.
That being said, I really loved the way Sharpe explored certain issues in this book. Sophie’s drug addiction is an underlying conflict that really affects a lot of Sophie’s relationships, choices, and ways of thinking, and it was done very well. Sophie’s grief for Mina, also is written authentically, though it never drags down the novel or steals the driving mystery plot.
And the mystery itself was extremely good. Sophie’s frustration with local detectives leads her to dig through Mina’s room, where she discovers notes relating to newspaper stories she was investigating at the time of her murder. Honestly, I 100% fell for a cleverly inserted red herring, and the actual culprit’s identity completely threw me. Even though Far From You deals with a lot of “issues” that one would commonly expect to see in a realistic fiction novel, the mystery itself isn’t made less-than.
Overall, I was overwhelmingly pleased with this book. Tess Sharpe’s debut YA release is well-written, complex, and honest. Far From You doesn’t let genre expectations define the story it wants to tell, and the end result is a perfect combination of murder-mystery and realistic fiction. I’m very, very impressed with this.
