Reconstructing Amelia

One day at her law office, Kate Baron receives a call from her daughter Amelia’s school saying she needs to be picked up from school as she has been suspended. Being an only parent, Kate must go there herself to pick her up. On her way to the school, Kate cannot imagine what Amelia could have done to get suspended, she’s a good student.

Once arriving at the school, much later than she told the school that she would be there, Kate notices an obvious police presence with ambulances at the scene. Kate soon learns that they are there because of her daughter. In the time that it took to get to the school, Amelia fell off the roof of the school, and it was ruled a suicide.

Kate now needs to learn to live in a world without her daughter. She takes a month of from work before returning. Upon her return she gets an anonymous text, stating that Amelia didn’t jump off the roof, and Kate begins to question what the police told her. Kate investigates with the help of a newly assigned police officer to Amelia’s case and she learns about everything that led Amelia up to the roof that day.

I really enjoyed this book and could not put it down. It kept me guessing about what happened and who was responsible to Amelia’s death. We see the story unfold in the present and in the past. We see Kate’s story in the present, and we have multiple sources from the past- an anonymously run website that posts gossip from the school Amelia attends, texts and Facebook posts to and from Amelia, and Amelia’s point of view starting around the beginning of the school year. There are also few email’s of Kate’s from the past and journal entries. All of this helps you see what is happening and ended up in death.