Review: Where It Began by Anne Redisch Stampler

Title: Where It Began

Author: Anne Redisch Stampler

Publisher:  Simon Pulse

Publication Date: 3.6.2012

Pages: 384

Genre: Contemporary

Series: No

Source: ARC from publisher

Rating: B

Summary (from Goodreads):

Gabby lived under the radar until her makeover. Way under. But when she started her senior year as a blonder, better-dressed version of herself, she struck gold: Billy Nash believed she was a the flawless girl she was pretending to be. The next eight months with Billy were bliss...Until the night Gabby woke up on the ground next to the remains of his BMW without a single memory of how she got there.

And Billy's nowhere to be found.

All Gabby wants is to make everything perfect again. But getting her life back isn't difficult, it's impossible. Because nothing is the same, and Gabby's beginning to realize she's missed more than a few danger signs along the way.

It's time for Gabby to face the truth, even if it means everything changes.

Especially if it means everything changes.

Review:

I love books that begin with a heavy dose of mystery. Anne Redisch Stampler does a fantastic job of throwing the reader in the deep end of the pool, but not drowning them. I love how she begins Where It Began, and the way she builds up the plot throughout the story.

Reading Gabby waking up was a lot like being Gabby. You have no idea who this girl is, where she’s from, or what the heck landed her in the hospital. The more I read about Gabby, the more I just came to love her. I wanted to protect her, but I also wanted to shake her at times. There were a few moments I felt she was being deliberately oblivious. It irritated me to a certain degree, but there’s just this likeability to the character I couldn’t escape.

There were only two negatives to this book: The first is that the writing sometimes lagged in places. I found myself skimming pages to see when things would pick back up. The other was a bit more personal in that I hate to be kept waiting too long for the answers. This book starts off intentionally confusing and broken as Gabby struggles to piece things back together, but as a reader I tend to get bored if I don’t get a conclusion in a timely manner. I felt there were places where the plot could have been sped up a bit.

This is a good contemporary novel, and I’m not sorry I invested the time reading it. I’m curious to see what Stampler will write next. I love her style and the way she pieces words together. Some people have a gift I call “sentence art” meaning they can put words together to create a masterpiece, and I felt that with Stampler’s writing.

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