Looking for JJ (original 2005; edition 2004)

I've been a fan of Anne Cassidy for years and this is my favourite of her books. It's a book that shocks you, firstly at it's content, but secondly and most importantly at the way it makes you feel about the protagonist: JJ. Jennifer Jones. Child murderer.
You are taken into the story through JJ's eyes, you do feel anger for what she did but you feel sorrow too. JJ is a person, fragile like everyone else and living with the burden of her past. She has been forced to start a new life under a new name, but just as she begins to get her new life going, the reporters show up, the secret investigators, people sent to search for someone who no longer exists: JJ.
The life she has tried to build is turned upside down and if she isn't careful she could lose everything, the boyfriend she loves, the friends she's made, even the identity that she's created for herself out of a past that doesn't seem to want to let her go.
A sad novel about redemption and forgiveness. How the good and bad guys are not so clearly defined in real life situations. ( )

Given to me by a colleague, a thought-provoking YA book.

JJ killed her best friend when she was 10. She goes to prison, but now she is a young woman, on the outside, trying to restart her life. Now known as Alice, she is living with her care worker trying to keep a step away ahead the press.

As a seventeen-year-old girl, Alice is trying to have a normal life, but she can't escape her past. And should she? While the author doesn't excuse what JJ did in her past, we do see how she came to be that little girl, a little girl capable of killing her own friend. It's hard to describe it without ruining the plot, but I think that Anne Cassidy got the balance between drama and humanity just right. ( )

Easy to read and kept me hooked. Seemed a tad unrealistic that such an emotionally damaged child could ultimately be portrayed as so undamaged as a young adult. I felt sympathy for JJ. I would have liked her to break out and run away abroad maybe with Frankie!! ( )

This is a mystery novel which gradually reveals the truth about JJ. The Press are looking for her to give them a great story, but she is also looking for herself. It is a sensitive and at times tense look at the psyche of a child that killed another child. The writer is sympathetic to JJ, and reader is invited to be so also. I was, but interestingly I have found that many of the teenagers who have given me reviews of this book are not. For them the fact that JJ killed another child overrides any consideration of her own situation. It made me think about how age and experience can make us more understanding - 'there but for the grace of God' - but of course, this is a book aimed at teenagers, so perhaps their reactions show that it doesn't quite succeed ( )

I just wasn't very moved by this book. I struggled almost all the way through it. I know it says it's a young adult story, so I wasn't expecting a really deep novel. I read a lot of these types of books though and this one was more juvenile than a young adult... to me anyway. Good idea and parts (very few sadly) really had me going but the bulk of it was just to slow. ( )