Imaginary Girls ~ Nova Ren Suma

Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes left floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns to town two years later, deadly surprises await. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood. {from book cover}

When I first heard about this book, I couldn’t wait to read it. I mean, it has some of my favorite story elements, plus the early buzz about it was great, so I figured it would be a slam dunk for me. Then I read it and… it just wasn’t.

I feel bad saying that because, looking at the book, I can see that it is amazingly well-written, the structure is superb, the characters are extremely well-developed. In short, my problem with it was not with the technical side of the book. Instead, I lacked a strong emotional connection to the story. Okay, this could be because I read this very early in the first trimester of my pregnancy, and so it’s possible that my fatigue is mostly to blame for this. Perhaps I was just too tired to really connect with the characters. Instead of finding Ruby fascinating, I just found her to be annoying, which then made Chloe and the people of the town annoying to me just for finding her to be this magnetic personality (plus other things that I won’t mention as they are spoilery).
But – BUT! – despite my issues with the story, what I keep going back to is that the writing is spectacular. Although I clearly found the characters less than impressive, the way the story unfolds worked for me. The scenes were so vivid that I felt like I was there watching everything happen before my eyes.
I wanted to love this book, but in the end I just didn’t. Had I read it at another point in my life, I may have had an entirely different reaction to it. But the truth is that our opinions of books (and everything else) are influenced by external circumstances; I can only give my initial impression. Maybe at some point I will pick this book up again and be singing a completely different tune.

Published: 2011 by Dutton
Pages: 352
Source: Publisher