Title: Nearly Gone (Nearly #1)
Author: Elle Cosimano
Published by: Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin Group
Released: 2014
Summary: Nearly's one hope of getting out of Sunny View Trailer Park is winning her school's chemistry scholarship. Nearly is a smart girl, and her brain is her ticket out. Then kids start getting attacked and killed, kids with a connection to Nearly. Clues pop up in the Personal Ads of the paper, ads Nearly reads religiously. It's up to her to catch the killer before it's too late.
My Thoughts: This is an interesting mystery that resides in an average book. I was very excited when I started, but figured out quickly that it wasn't going to be a book I would love.
My main problem with this story is Nearly, I don't like her. There are those smart, educated kinds of people in the world that think they are better than everybody else, Nearly was one of those people. I can't stand those people. And while Nearly was book smart, I really questioned her common sense. Nearly is also not very nice to her Mom and puts a lot of blame on her. Nearly's dad took off when she was younger, never to be seen again, and her Mom is kind of forced to become a stripper at a club to make ends meet. Nearly doesn't blame her dad though, but looks down on her mom because of what she does. I don't think that's fair, and if Nearly really is driven to get out of her current situation, she could have tried to get a part time job instead of making excuses about her tutoring schedule. Instead she depends on other people to drive her around, pay for her stuff, and she's constantly taking money from her Mom's tip jar to keep up her newspaper habit. I can't feel sorry for such a mean girl who takes advantage of so many people, yet continues to pass herself off as a victim.
The mystery did keep me guessing, I'll give it that, but I was frustrated by Nearly's actions. At the end of the story, Nearly is talking about how a friend's parents blame her, and I was like, Yes Yes Yes they should blame you Nearly. But Nearly brushes it off and says some people just need someone to blame, suggesting that everything that happened is in no part a result of her own actions. The frustration was real. Nearly does go to the police at first, but tells them really nothing, and then never contacts them again. She doesn't tell them about the ads in the paper or any other clues that could help the police. Then she decides that the police just want to blame her, so she's done with the police. I think the killer could have been caught a whole lot sooner if Nearly had common sense and let the police handle it. Because Nearly's whole journey to catch the killer ended up with a lot more dead people. She didn't make a good detective at all.
Also, I found there was no real point to Nearly's special ability. It makes her prickly, and then just serves to mess things up further in the story.
I found Nearly Gone to be an okay read, but I did have a lot of frustrations with it. I don't like Nearly. It might be close to say that I hated Nearly. When I don't like the main character of a story, it's really hard for me to like the book. The mystery was decent, so I'll give it that.
BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 3/5
Good Mystery, Annoying Nearly
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