Review: Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

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July 24, 2017 by Zoë

When Lucinda, a high school girl, is found dead, her small town is rocked. Particularly affected are Russ, a police officer investigating her death; and Jade and Cameron, two of her classmates. Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka follows the intersecting lives of these three characters as they come to terms with Lucinda’s death and battle their own demons.

The Good
This book was supposed to be a character-driven mystery. There’s a mystery going on, but there are also lots of other dark things going on in the characters’ lives. They’re all connected, though they might not realize it, and they have to face their own problems before the mystery can be solved. It’s an interesting way of telling the story and I appreciate that.

The Bad
Unfortunately, for a character-driven story I couldn’t really connect with any of the characters. Cameron was creepy and clearly had a ton of issues; Russ was a little boring and didn’t know how to relate to his wife, which was super off-putting; and Jade was the most interesting but also not really sympathetic. I don’t need my characters to be totally sympathetic, good people, but I just didn’t have anything to grab on to here. The story was lacking something, and I think it was in its characters.

The mystery’s resolution was also a little easy and sudden. The person who killed Lucinda came a little out of nowhere. I wasn’t too bothered by this bit, but if you’re looking for a good mystery with clues, this probably isn’t it.

The Verdict
There was nothing terribly wrong with this book, but nothing exceptional either. Check it out if it sounds interesting, but it didn’t do it for me.

“Your tiny consolation: magic can’t be real. This can’t be your fault.”

I was offered an electronic copy of this book through Netgalley for this review.