I personally did not love this book, but it is the kind of book I could recommend to a student who is looking for a mysterious read. It was sort of a spine tingler, and many students really like this kind of book. Normally I do, as well, but this one, for some reason, I did not connect with. Purchase in libraries where mysteries are popular.

This one was not for me. I couldn’t get into it the way I anticipated that I would. Maybe it’s because I am a mood reader or maybe because it just wasn’t my kind of book but either way, I just couldn’t get myself to pick it up.

This book centers around Bailey, a teen, who suddenly loses her best friend in an accident. The reasons behind her friends death don’t make sense so Bailey uses an AI app to recreate her best friend and fine the answers.

This book was really just neutral for me. I feel that for portions of this book I really just felt like I personally have aged out of this to enjoy it at its full potential.
Grief for me can be a triggering subject, but I felt the author wrote it well.

The mystery in the novel was made out to be some big reveal and I didn’t think it was big at all. It felt anti-climatic.

2.5 stars

A heart-breaking story of loss and grief. At times, it was difficult to read. I sometimes wished there was more happening. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the text thread element.

I always tell people that I have only ever cried from reading a book at the end of “More Happy Than Not” by Adam Silvera. Well… now I have two books that made me cry. Get ready for an emotional rollercoaster with Dante’s intelligent and relatable characters in this mixed media masterpiece.

Message Not Found was delightfully crafted and heart-wrenching, all about a teenage girl whose best friend suddenly dies and leaves behind more questions than answers.
Bailey, our MC, is surrounded by grief after her best friend Vanessa suddenly and tragically dies after leaving Bailey's in the middle of the night. To cope, and to find out what made her drive anywhere in that snowstorm, she creates an artificial intelligence comprised of data between her and Vanessa (and eventually from other sources as well) and begins messaging the program which she dubs V. While secretly messaging V, she navigates as best as she can through school, romance and friendships, all the while trying to find an answer to her grief.
Medema's intimate knowledge of grief and the human condition of needing answers even to unanswerable questions reverberates in the pages of this novel, simultaneously comforting and upsetting the reader in a masterful way. I sobbed at many points while reading, feeling Bailey's pain and confusion as my own, and smiling through tears at other points. This novel is perfect for readers of all types, and especially timely due to all of the types of loss caused by the pandemic.

Message Not Found is an absolute roller coaster of emotions, and I can definitely see this being great for those who want a tear-jerker (I personally didn't cry, but I rarely do at books).

The way Medema writes about Bailey's (and those around her's) grief is so incredibly moving, and I really think she did an excellent job of portraying the loss of someone close to you. Bailey sort of views Vanessa through rose-colored glasses, and it can be hard when you lose someone who is, in your eyes, so perfect.

Vanessa wasn't perfect, though, and I was enthralled as Bailey tried to figure out just what had happened that night.

I also really enjoyed the way the story was told in alternating prose and text messages - it made for a quick read, and kept me engaged the whole way through.

Overall, I highly recommend Message Not Found - it's sure to fill you to the brim with emotion,

I received a free Advanced Reading Copy via NetGalley in exchange for a complete and honest review.

I am pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this book!! It was very well written and all the characters were multi-faceted. This book deals with heavy topics such as the death of a loved one and cheating. I also did NOT see the twist coming and I swear to you, my jaw DROPPED.

Wow! This was a well crafted piece that was both plot and character driven. Bailey is greiving the recent death of her best friend, Vanessa. As a result of her devastation, she creates a chat bot version of Vanessa. Unfortunately, it does not bring her the closure she so desperately desires. Bailey still has so many unanswered questions about the events leading up to Vanessa's death; so, she decides to go digging for answers. Will Bailey be satisfied when she uncovers all of Vanessa's secrets? If you care to find out, you need to run out and pick up a copy of this book!

The concept of AI Chatbots are new to me but wow was I impressed and with a mystery thrown in, I loved it!

If you think you can escape from reading Dante Medema’s new novel Message Not Found without being at least misty-eyed by the end, you’re either incredibly strong-willed or insane.

Bailey and Vanessa have been best friends since they were young, and they were so close that they were practically sisters. They shared everything with one another: secrets, dreams, and packets of Pop Rocks as a way to cope with bad days. All of that disappears from Bailey’s life when Vanessa leaves Bailey’s house to go home, and is found dead after swerving off a cliff nowhere near where she lived.

Desperate to have some semblance of Vanessa back in her life, Bailey creates a chatbot of Vanessa using years of text message threads, social media posts, and emails. The more she adds into the chatbot, the more it feels like she is speaking to the real Vanessa.

But the question of why Vanessa was found far from home still lingers, and Bailey is determined to uncover the secrets that may have led to Vanessa’s death.

Message Not Found will take you down numerous emotional twists and turns as Bailey struggles to find her footing in a world without Vanessa, but it is not a thriller mystery or a dark ‘whodunit’ story.

The mystery of this book relates more to Bailey’s desperation in finding out the answers to why Vanessa’s body was found far from where she said she was going and about what secrets Vanessa was hiding from Bailey when they shared everything with one another.

This book, more or less, takes us through Bailey’s journey of the five stages of grief after Vanessa’s death: denial at her death, and creating a chatbot to pretend that her friend is alive a little bit longer; anger at each one of Vanessa’s secret that she was not aware of; depression, leading to her faltering grades; and more.

And that is what makes this novel so powerful: it does not need to include a murder mystery to enrapture its audience, because grief in and of itself is such a forceful message to share.

Dante Medema really knows how to translate raw grief into her pages. Message Not Found is an emotional rollercoaster that will not easily let you go. Medema excellently illustrates the harsh reality of losing a loved one and, at times, the hurt that can stem from being unable to confront that loved one when their secrets come out.

I have been fortunate enough to not have experienced the death of a best friend, but Medema’s writing truly made me at least understand that pain. There were many tears shed while reading this book, that’s for sure!

Message Not Found is a cozy read that examines grief in all stages. Have a box of tissues handy, you’re going to need them!

Thank you Netgalley for the e-ARC!

Message Not Found is about Bailey and her best friend Vanessa. After Vanessa’s sudden death Bailey is left with the mystery of how it happened and she wants to find out the truth.

Ok I loved this book! The chapters were so short so it was a quick read.
I finished this in just a couple of hours, that’s how good it was!

I figured out who the mysterious guy was really early on and I was so frustrated with Bailey for not getting it. It was kinda cliché but still loved it.

I enjoyed Message Not Found by Dante Medema. Some of the chapters in this book are text threads, so that helped to keep the story flowing quickly. This story deals with losing a best friend and the grief that everyone must deal with. Bailey was desperate for answers as to why this happened to her best friend, so her grief took a backseat. Eventually, though, Bailey must face what her life will be like without her best friend, and she will need her family and other friends to help her through it.
Overall, this was an enjoyable story, and I would read more novels by Medema in the future. I know many teens that will like this book.

This book was beautifully written about a girl who loses her best friend. While trying to handle the grief as well as high school, college applications and boys. She finds herself learning that people are not always who they seem. She finds that her best friend was one person to her but someone totally different with someone else. She learns a few secrets along the way but it's how she handles those secrets.

Once you pick up this book you won't be able to put it down.

I got the honor to an advanced copy. This book is filled with emotions. Your emotions will be all over the place. I read this relatively quickly because it was so good I couldn’t put it down.

I need the physical copy so I can annotate it and read this over and over again

Straight out of an episode of Black Mirror, Message Not Found is a unique exploration of grief. Told in a mix of traditional narration, text messages, Google searches, and newspapers articles, Dante Medema introduces us to a character, Bailey, who’s grieving her best friend's unexpected death as well as attempting to understand why it happened.

I liked the formatting of the book, going from Bailey’s POV to her text messages, to her talking to an AI version of Vanessa. You get an interesting look into how she handles this unexpected death. The Google searches were a nice touch - allowing us to get an insight into what Bailey is thinking without explicitly saying it.

This is a great mystery for YA. Nothing is too insane that it takes you out of the story without being boring. The writing is quick and easy to get into. Bailey is a sympathetic character that you want to see succeed and heal.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quill Tree Books for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I should not have said "oh my god, no!" outloud nearly as many times as I did.
At its core, "Message Not Found" is a novel about grief and how we process death. It is difficult to create a fully developed character when that character dies approximately twenty pages in, but Vanessa is really what drives the story. A main character searching for answers after someone's death is not necessarily a new concept. However, Bailey using software to reconstruct Vanessa in chatbot form was fascinating and created a lot of tension as she searched for answers.
As someone who never cries when reading, I cried three times.

I did not expect to fall in love with this book quite as hard as I did. But wow, fall I did. The thing you need to know is, yes this book is sad. And yes, you will likely cry unless you are some kind of cyborg. But it isn't just sad. It's a whole story, not just the tragic parts. And I think that is what made me love it so much. Yes, you will absolutely grieve with Bailey, but you will also root so hard for her, and for the others, to live their best lives despite this loss.

When Vanessa dies, tragically and incomprehensibly, Bailey just cannot cope with her grief. Understandable, since they were best friends, but to add to it, there are things about Vanessa's last moments and death that just don't add up for Bailey. She's basically driving herself nuts trying to figure out what she is missing, likely as her coping mechanism. When she comes up empty with friends and family, she uses her mom's program to create a Vanessa bot to chat with. I'm not sure how to explain it that doesn't seem absurd, because it isn't absurd. It's heart wrenching, full stop.

Bailey grows so much as a person during the story, too. Yes, it is about her coming to terms with Vanessa's death and secrets. But it's also about her finding her own way, despite this giant hole in her life, despite the loss of the future she thought she'd have beside Vanessa. The people she meets through her journey, the new relationships she builds and the existing relationships she builds upon, are just wonderful to discover. This book absolutely won my whole heart.

Bottom Line: A powerful journey of heartbreak and loss, of healing and growth, I adored this book from start to finish.

Bailey and Vanessa have been best friends their whole lives, but one night Vanessa leaves Bailey’s house abruptly and dies in a car accident. In her grief, Bailey builds a Vanessa chat bot using their text messages and emails. When that isn’t enough, she gets (steals) additional data from Vanessa’s conversations with other people, which leads to the bot revealing that Vanessa was keeping some big secrets from Bailey.

•-•-•-•

I overall really enjoyed this story and loved that it was set in Alaska. Bailey’s grief over Vanessa’s loss and her obsession with discovering what happened that night felt heartbreakingly real. The chat bot angle was fascinating (and more than a little creepy, honestly), and I loved how sections of the book were written as text exchanges. Bailey’s slow realization that Vanessa wasn’t exactly the person she thought she was made for an interesting puzzle of a plot with emotionally complex characters coming to terms with their grief.

oh i'm so happily surprised by this one! dante's debut was wonderful, but this was even better. with a premise that really drew me in, and writing that was lush and delicate yet funny and heartfelt, this was nearly perfect.