Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a copy for review.



Synopsis

Six years ago, Anna Williams-straight-A student, cheerleader, and all-around golden child-vanished.



Ever since, her younger sister, Katie, has drifted through life, wracked with guilt, grief, and anger over Anna's unsolved disappearance. But when her own future reaches a breaking point, Katie takes the investigation into her own hands. She searches for answers in her sister's missing person's file and discovers that some questions aren't so easily answered.



Through police memos, interrogations, and excerpts from Anna's diary, Katie breaks down the carefully crafted façade Anna left behind and uncovers the dark truths of her life in the months before she vanished.



My Thoughts:



I loved the idea of this book, I really did. The addition of police reports, interview transcripts, and text messages really gave this the feeling of delving deep into the unsolved case of Anna's disappearance.

Katie as a character felt real, she is messy, broken, and trying desperately to come to terms with the loss of her sister.

I only had one issue and that was the unexplained reasons why Katie had problems with her dad and they go unanswered even till the end of the book. Why and what happened? if there was no answer to this then why add it to the plot of the book. It seemed unnecessary and pointless.

3/5 stars

This book tells the story of a girl named Katie who decides to look through files relating to the disappearance of her sister Anna to try and find out more about what happened to her and why she went missing. Through this, she discovers secrets about her sister that she never knew about. I liked how the book switched perspectives between the time when Anna disappeared and Katie's life in present day.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and felt engaged in it but the ending let me down. It felt rushed and didn't conclude the story well unfortunately. There was still a storyline about Anna's dad that was never rounded off and it all felt a bit anticlimactic when the story is drawn to a close.

However, I would recommend this book for a quick read.

I really enjoyed the format of this book. I haven't read a lot of books that incorporated other forms of storytelling such as diary entries, interviews, etc. This definitely made the book more engaging and interactive. It was also pretty easy to read. I also like how the book dealt with a lot of important and heavy topics. Overall, I really enjoyed the plot. However, I didn't feel connected to the characters.

2.5/5

A contemporary mystery that ended up being entirely not so. After the unsolved disappearance of her sister Anna six years ago, Katie Williams reopens the investigation herself and attempts to solve the mystery of her disappearance once and for all. What results is a deep dive into her sisters innermost thoughts, police interviews, and her missing persons file, as she grapples with what truly happened all those years ago.

I for one love a good mystery, put it together with a complicated sisterly relationship and this seemed like the perfect contemporary for me. The writing style and overarching themes were excellent, and one of the first things that stood out to me in the reading process, but that is unfortunately all I liked about this book. My main issue with this as a whole, is that it seemed to focus more on a character study of Anna, then the overall mystery and Katie as a person. From the synopsis, there definitely seemed to be an emphasis of Katie having the prominent role in investigating the past in order to solve the mystery, and her life in the years after. I was practically begging for more scenes focused on the present day narrative and how Katie developed in response to what she was learning. The mystery aspect and transitions into important texts and interviews, were necessary given that Katie was trying to solve what happened to her sister. With response to the ending, however, the amount of time spent showing the interviews and documents should have been cut by half. The revelation that the mystery was actually why Anna had run away, and not where she was, should have led to an even focus on Anna and Katie respectively. Given that so much of the book consisted of research into the investigation, I was expecting there to be more. The ending really fell flat after the build up from the beginning of the book. This is not to say that the themes explored weren't important, but if you go into this expecting a mystery and an exploration of a complicated family relationship, you won't be getting it.

I went into this book REALLY wanting to like it, but it just felt too forced to me. The usually LOVE mixed media. But the interview transcripts just felt so... unrealistic. Forced. The plot was entertaining enough, it was a very quick read. I usually like “heavy” books like this, once’s that deal with depressing and/or important and dangerous controversial issues, but this book just didn’t do it for me

"I think everyone puts on an act. Everyone’s scared of showing their true selves, because what if no one likes who we really are deep down? We need people to love us and care for us, especially as kids. We need them to pick us up when we fall and remind us that the world isn’t as ugly as it might seem in that moment. We need people to look us in the eye and be honest, even when it hurts. We need people to stick around, even after we show them the worst of ourselves. And we need people to believe in us so that we can believe in ourselves. But what if the people we need don’t do any of those things?"

4.5 Stars | Quick and Suspenseful

Fine follows a highschool student, Katie, and her complex past. Several years ago, her sister and bestfriend, Anna, disappeared from what they thought was a safe little town. Anna had a great life. She was a cheerleader, class vice-president, and had a likeable personality. Was she kidnapped? Was she suicidal? Did she run away? Many years after the case was closed, on what would be Anna's 24th birthday, Katie decides to go through the police files, and finds dark secrets about her sister she would have never guessed were true.

Where to start? Well, first of all, this was a quick read, and it definitely had some originality.

I'll start with the writing. The writing was interesting. It wasn't amazing, but the author did have some skill, especially this being her first book. My favorite thing about this book was the interview recordings and notes that were added in, as well as the email and text evidence. I love when you can read from the spot of the detective, interrogating so many different people. This would be a spectacular audiobook, hearing all the police interviews.

Now for the characters. Characters aren't usually the most developed part in a mystery book, but this book did have some character development. I liked the side characters the most, especially Jack and to be honest, the detective! Now here's where my problem is (the reason for taking off a star): I truly didn't like Katie very much. She did have development, but she was very touchy and snobby. But, since the interviews and such took up half of the perspective, this didn't bother me a ton.

The plot. Wow, there were definitely some plot twists, and I loved how this is one of those books where every character is suspicious at one point or another. I'll be honest, I don't have tons to say about the plot, but, there were some twists and turns, and some authentic things you don't see in every thriller.

The ending! (SPOILERS!!!) So, was I a huge fan? Actually, I'd say so! Usually, when a suspected murder ends up being a suicide, I'm angry and agitated. But, the author did something special about this. She wrote small hints, and had different events that slowly added up to ending, instead of just a suspect here, suspect there, probably a murder here, clues there, and then, boom, suicide. It made the book original and the ending emotional and gasp-worthy. I will say, the book left a few loose strings, but that kept me inclined.

Overall I really enjoyed Fine! Although Katie wasn't my favorite, the mystery, side-characters, writing, and special add-ins (recordings, texts, etc.) really made this book suspenseful and special!

Highly recommend! 4.5/5 Stars

Fine focuses on the story of Katie, whose sister Anna disappeared when six years ago. In the present day, Katie is really struggling, and decides to look into her sister's disappearance. The story is told from both Katie's perspective and through Anna's case file. In the process of her investigation, she discovers secrets about her parents and her sister.

There were a couple of loose ends that have me scratching my head. For example, things are hinted at about Anna' and her father's relationship, but never revealed. Similarly, you never really find out what happened to Anna. It left me feeling like I missed something from the book. I actually went back to read parts of it make sure I didn't just gloss over important details, but no, they aren't there.

Overall, an enjoyable YA mystery/thriller, but the ending felt a little unfinished.

This review will appear on my blog & Goodreads on October 17, 2020.

Trigger warnings: Eating disorders, drug use, mental health struggles.

Introduction

Six years ago, Katie's sister Anna disappeared. Katie was 12 at the time, and Anna was 18. Because Katie was so young when Anna disappeared, there was a lot that she didn't understand. Katie has never truly gotten over the disappearance of Anna, and now that Katie is 18, she feels like she's been in the dark about the details about her sister's case for too long, and she begins spending time at her local police station, looking through Anna's files. Through evidence and personal items collected in her police file, Katie soon begins to realize that she maybe didn't know Anna as well as she thought she did.

Format

The story is told almost completely through media found in Anna's police file, like diary entries, transcribed interviews, reports, text messages, and emails. I absolutely love when books use elements like this to tell a story. However, these media pieces took up more of the book than I thought. It is the only way that Anna's story is unraveled. Very little of the story takes place in the present, so we don't see very much of Katie's life as it is now. If I had to estimate, I'd say that maybe 30 pages of the book are dedicated to what Katie is doing in her life, besides sifting through police reports.

Characters

Because most of the story is told through Anna's file and very little of the story is actually focused on Katie, I had a hard time caring about her. We don't learn very much about her personality besides the fact that she harbors a lot of anger, about what happened to her sister and otherwise.

From the little that we do see of Katie in her personal life, I found her to be annoying. She was written more like a 14-15 year old than an 18 year old. She has very childish tendencies that I wouldn't expect somebody of that age to do, such as almost run her car off the road when she had a passenger that was only trying to help her, lashing out when she's asked about college, or stealing a customer's smoothie when she got fired from her job. In a way, I am sort of glad that most of the book was just sifting through Anna's file at the police station, because Katie is set up to be a very annoying protagonist.

Just as I didn't learn enough about Katie to care about her, I didn't learn enough about Jack, Katie's neighbor and love interest, to care about him or their budding romance.

Plot

There were some parts of the book that I felt were never actually resolved or fully developed. There were several instances where a falling out was mentioned between Anna and her father, but what the rift was about was never disclosed. Since the falling out apparently played such a big role in her emotional turmoil, I would have liked to have known what actually happened.

Spoilers ahead!

I feel like I was a little bit mislead plot-wise in general. For the entire book, it seems that Katie and her family don't know where Anna is/what happened to her, but when the ending comes, it is apparent that they do know what what happened to her/where she is, but they don't know why she ended up how she did. I understand why it had to be written that way, but because the official synopsis of book seems to allude to a bit more of a mystery, finding out that all the characters knew Anna's fate all along felt a little anticlimactic.

Conclusion

This book was okay, but I probably wouldn't pick it up again due to the lack of character depth and slightly disappointing ending, but it was okay and is suitable if you're just looking for a quick read that has the interesting elements of diary entries, emails, text messages, etc.

Fair warning, this is not a light and easy book. It will put you through the emotional wringer. There are a lot of extremely serious and deep topics touched on. We follow Katie as she deals with the emotional toll of her sister's disappearance 6 years prior. The main portion of the book is told through the police file as Katie reads it. It's a difficult read but worth it.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Fine in exchange for an honest review.

Fine was fine conceptually, in practice it just wasn't enough. Following our personalityless protagonist Katie as she looks back on the disappearance of her sister Anna 6 years prior, Fine is a mixed medium 'mystery' that turns out to be a lot less mystery, a lot more character study. This book doesn't have much in the way of plot which is fine because I'm pretty sure its supposed to serve mostly as a study of Anna and the teen experience as a whole, but neither Anna or Katie felt like actual teenagers so as a commentary, it fell really short. There's a semblance of being a teenager, but its all overblown to the point of it really sounding like an adult talking about their fears of what teenagers are doing instead of what teens are actually doing. Anna, Katie, and their friends also all speak and process events and relationships as if they were a lot younger than their actual ages which heightens the divide between them and actual teens.

I normally like mixed medium, but it didn't work here. This book uses a lot of records of interviews done in the investigation of Anna's disappearance to introduce characters and plot elements, but it always felt a lot more like the author outlining plot points than actual interview transcripts (for example, the transcript includes details like dramatic sighs that I highly doubt appear in actual police transcripts. Keep in mind I read an early copy so that specific example may change). Whenever we read a transcript I found it impossible to forget that I was reading a book someone had written and it made it even harder to see anyone as actual characters.

I enjoyed this book. The summary of this one really.caught my eye.
I opened the book and got a fee chapters in and this was not what I was expecting at all!
Don't get me wrong, it was a fast quick read. It just wasn't what I thought. Which was a little disappointing.
I enjoyed the characters. The plot.
Overall it was ok.

Thank You NetGalley Publisher and Author for this copy!

Fine by Amylea Murphy is the story of a sudden unexplained disappearance of 17-year-old Anna. She was a straight-A student, a cheerleader, and an all-rounder who had no reason to run away or disappear. The story is set from the perspective of Katie, her sister, who was 12-years-old when Anna went missing. She is now 17-years-old and attempts to find out more about her sister and her disappearance. She starts probing into her police report file and discovers more and more about her family’s past and finds out about the real Anna.
Information about her through her police reports is written in the form of diary entries, transcription records of phone calls with family and friends which was very interesting to read. The book discussed various issues related to teenagers and their mental health during these growing years.

“Our eyes are being opened to war, racism, and poverty. We’re learning about complicated issues of climate change, technology, and all kinds of other things that are wholly out of our control. We’re wondering how the adults in charge haven’t found a way to solve any of it. And while we contemplate all this, we’re trying to have some fun and make some memories.”

The story was a bit incomplete and in some places. Anna’s relationship with her dad has been very good but suddenly she started to hate him and he started ignoring him. However, there is no context as to how she has a sudden change of feelings. The plot was a bit slow-paced but I guess that is how the story was set.

Otherwise, the theme of the story is very important and relevant in today’s society and that message has been very well delivered. If some plot holes were fixed, this would have been a phenomenal read.

~★~ What is this book about? ~★~

Six years ago, Katie's older sister disappeared without a trace. Katie can't fathom why Anna would have a reason to run, and hates the thought of something horrible having happened to her.
It feels like forever since that day, and the mystery of Anna's disappearance was never solved.
Katie wants the truth, and decides the best way to find it will be looking through her sister's case file.

~★~

From the beginning, I was really interested in the premise of this book. I was looking forward to uncovering the mystery of Anna, as well as how her sister was managing her absence. While this was partially delivered, I feel I didn't get to know Katie well enough, and instead learned mostly about Anna from reading her case files.

AmyLea Murphy's writing made for a quick and easy time reading. While it didn't stand out much from other contemporaries, I can't complain about it. I did like the formatting of journal entries and audio transcriptions as a method of piecing together Anna's character.

While this book wasn't necessarily outstanding, nor did it bring anything new to the table, I did find myself engaged in the story and curious as to how things would play out. There are definitely people who will enjoy this one!

While I enjoyed this book, I felt that there were a lot of Important incomplete pieces to the story.
It definitely had potential to be great but just fell a little flat.
Katie’s sister Anna went missing 6 years ago and decides to go through the police file of her case. Throughout the book we get to know Anna while we only hear from Katie in short pieces (it was actually enjoyable that even though Katie is the one still alive and we’re seeing things unfold through her eyes, we instead get to know Anna more from the interrogations of friends, text messages, and diary entries)

The book talks about Anna’s relationship with her father and how at one point it was great and then suddenly took a sharp turn, the author never tells us why this happened and just felt like something that either should have been left out or explained further.

The end seemed very rushed and didn’t seem like we found out anything. Did she kill herself? Did she run away? Was she abducted? We have no idea.

I really did enjoy how Anna responds “I’m fine” to people even though inside she truly isn’t. I feel that on SUCH a deep level. It’s easier to say I’m fine than to spill what you’re really feeling. I feel like Anna felt as if she didn’t have anyone she thought truly cared to hear how she really was, she felt like they’re asking to be nice. She didn’t see that some of those people truly did care about her until it was too late.

Overall I did enjoy this book, I was hoping for a little more mystery but it was a quick read and kept me intrigued by the Interesting format of the book.

I was provided a free ARC courtesy of Netgalley. I’m undecided on whether I liked this book or not. It was very readable and the format of the writing was interesting since it incorporated diary entries, police reports, interviews, and text exchanges. However, with that being said, the ending came a little out of left field and I wasn’t sure whether we were supposed to take away that the main character knew her sister’s whereabouts all along or not.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for my copy of this book.

This book was well written and easy to get into. I would definitely recommend it.

I loved this book! Fine kept me intrigued and invested with the characters till the last page. I loved how the story was told in mixed media and even included pictures.

It was my first YA novel that I would have given all the 5 stars to but there were so many pertinent incomplete bits that made it fall short of a great read. It breaks my heart to say I give it just 3 stars, it had the potential to be a knock your socks of kind of a book.

If you liked 13 Reasons Why, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and the trope of a missing sister and all the proceedings that happen to decrypt the how and why and what in the disappearance and the fragile mindset of adolescents and teenagers , you should read this book.

Teenagers are the most misunderstood people , they are treated like children and expected to act like adults. Its mind numbingly befuddling and complicated being teenagers. The story starts off by Katie Williams an 18 year old who terribly misses her elder sister, her everything who mysteriously disappeared 6 years ago without any trace. Katie hasn't been able to make peace with it and now that she is not just a flimsy 12 year old kid but an 18 year old she decides to dive deep and find the real truth about her beloved sister, ANNA WILLIAMS.

Anna is a high power, straight As, high achiever, dutiful daughter, doting and very loving dream sister one could have. She is IMPECCABLE on the outside, being what is expected of her as a young woman. She feels putting her needs is being a LOSER or a weak person and shies away from being herself and always puts the "I AM FINE" act always for everyone. But deep down, she is into smithereens, shattered, broken, coming apart. She writes her true feelings in a diary.

What I liked:

- Fast paced, relatable, articulate

- The book is filled with diary page entires, emails, real SMS texts, flyers, police reports so it gives a very authentic reading experience. Loved it!

- The love and relationship between the sisters is adorable and sweet. Likeable main characters.

What I didnt like:

It breaks my heart when I love a book this much and it has these low blows and unanswered subplots in there.

- Why did Anna start hating her dad suddenly and go from being a daddy's girl to just literally banging and bruising her head after a phone conversation with him? WHY? That was never addressed in the entire story, not even in the end.

- The end was rushed and seemed anti climatic. An epilogue would be good.

I would love to read more of her books as I liked it nonetheless. Its a decent read.

Its easier to say "I AM FINE", when people ask. "HOW ARE YOU", because they don't really care and don't want to be troubled by someone's dirty laundry. Thats the harsh truth. So you just tell them whats easier and what they WANT TO HEAR which is FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.

“Fine” is a young adult book centered around a woman named Katie Williams, whose older sister – Anna – suddenly disappeared, and most of the story is centered around Katie, her family, and the police trying to figure out what happened to Anna.

This was a pretty quick read for me, but it definitely wasn’t an easy one. This book mentions a lot of difficult subjects throughout that could possibly be triggering to some, and it’s undoubtedly a very heavy read, but regardless, I still really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

I haven't been a teenager for some years now, but this book reminded me of all my sassy inner thoughts. I really loved the mystery aspect of this book. I thought the pages that looked like actual documents were awesome, really brought me into the experience. I highly recommend.