Kit Frick

This might be geared towards young adults, but I was hooked from the opening and ended up carrying the book around while running errands in case I had a few moments to keep reading. This definitely gave me Gossip Girl (TV adaptation) meets Revenge vibes, and I loved it. Getting to see the story from multiple POVs helped you to not only really understand the characters, but piece together the story. The characters have great depth, and it's easy to distinguish their voices (even if you didn't show more have their names at the start of the chapters). Everyone has secrets, and unraveling everything the further in you get just adds to the allure of the story overall. An excellent book that I would recommend to all thriller lovers! show less

CW: sexual content, death of loved one in accident, cheating

Well it dragged a bit before coming to it's predictable ending.

That being said I did want to know what was going to happen, so Kit did a great job of building intrigue. I thought the sense of instability in the friendship group was done incredibly well and found myself feeling a bit anxious for the characters at times. The dynamics between young women can be fraught with difficulty when they are focused on their perceived pecking show more order to determine how they relate to each other and function as a group. It made for some tense moments as I was reading. I liked the dual timeline although as I mentioned it did drag out a little. I was coiled like a spring wanting to know what was going to happen and then it kept going and going. There is only so long you can be on the edge of your seat before you take a breath and sink back in annoyance. Overall though, a good YA mystery that looks at themes of lies and betrayal. show less

Ugh. I hate a twist. I so hate a twist. Even a really good twist!

This was a great read; I didn't want to set it down, and barely did, from start to finish. The reveal is a long way in and I think perhaps some of it could have been trimmed (seriously, why did Jonathan even make the list?) but the curiosity was killing me, but it is a heck of a pay-off. In retrospect-of course-it makes perfect sense-how did I not see that-but I definitely didn't and it was worth the wait for the reveal! The show more twist is just big enough to feel authentic to the emotional build-up and guilt journey leading up to it, but not so big that it just seems ridiculous. Just excellent.

This one felt like high school to me, all that melodrama and heatbreak and that 111%ness of all feelings and experiences. It rang true, the locations, the rituals, the whole rest of your life as merely backdrop to the meaningful relationship, be it friendship or romance. That singular focus...

The only thing I wasn't sure of Ret - there's, just, this trope of the high school meangirl who has all the emotional manipulative powers of a first world national spy service and never misses the mark puppeteering her underlings... and while it is engaging to read, I don't think I buy it. These people only exist in fiction. Am I wrong? I mean, mean girls: yes, of course they exist - but nobody hits the cruelty target that effectively everytime. I mean, is anybody actually that effectively Machivellian? Wouldn't it be exhausting to be emotionally managing/abusing/manipulating all of the time?

I also appreciate that this one took its time with the ending. The ending goes on awhile after the reveal, there's only some closure and a bit of what is next. The epilogue contains barely a narrative bow to tie things up and I think the ending is the better for it.

This is just a really great YA read. My thanks to the publisher, author and netgalley for the eBook ARC for review. show less

Pre-order available now! Amazon
4.5 Stars

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . "

Yes, I read this super early, several months in advance of its release date, but I couldn't get it off my mind once I saw the cover and read the blurb. When a book like this is sitting on your Kindle, you read it, publish date ignored. Within a handful of pages, I knew this was the sort of book that required my full attention. Kit Frick's beautiful prose pulled me into the solar system made up of Ellory, show more Ret, Bex, and Jennie, with me flickering on the sidelines as a star, watching their natural rotation unravel. With Ellory as our narrator, we see the friends in the past and in the present, known only as Then and Now. We know the friendship was rocky and dependent on Ret, we know now that they are no longer friends, we know that something happened in the summer of junior year, and we know that all Ellory wants is to get through her senior year unseen and unheard.

"Somewhere, there's an alternate reality version of Ellory. . . . I think about that girl sometimes, until the wanting gets too big, and I have to stop."

I don't want to ruin the novel for readers checking out reviews in advance of See All the Stars' release date, so this review will be as broad as I can make it. I'll try not to gush endlessly, but really, I want to, and I want to post the 29,803 quotes that I highlighted. A coming of age story that belongs with the best of them, See All the Stars takes you back to the high school halls filled with drama, friendships, and first love. The alternating storyline allows readers to become a part of the story, reliving Ellory's junior year experiences and floating alongside her while she hides from everyone during her senior year. With a large cast of secondary characters, we visit parties, river banks, classrooms, and bedrooms, each character and scene proving to be pivotal to the story line.

"Our hands were the beginning of a spectacular, bright promise."

Then, we recognize her naivety in her willingness to submit to her friend Ret, the self appointed leader of their group, and in her desperate hope to make her first real relationship last. We learn that though Ret and Ellory call themselves best friends, they're held together more out of necessity, they need each other, just as they need the other two to balance them out. We watch her downward spiral as she accepts the use of alcohol and drugs around her, how she lets things slide that as readers we scream at her to question, and how she becomes a puppet to a friend's desperate need to have her all to herself. Now, we praise her complex development as she ages another year, but we also ache with each lie she believes and each lie she tells herself. As Now reaches the last chapters, we rejoice as Ellory learns to face the thing that left her friendless, boyfriendless, and alone. The style of writing, and the alternating time frames allows readers to experience the then, while also uncovering the truths that the friends didn't know at the time, revealing us the details of the fall. The accident, something we don't know understand until the end, pulls the friends in two directions and Kit Frick's decision to only write from Ellory's perspective forces us to choose her side.

"My mom calls what happened the fall. It's a kindness, a shortcut, a way of taking something hard and shaping it into two little words that can slip off your tongue."

See All the Stars is the sort of novel that shouldn't be limited to only readers of the Young Adult genre. It's too complex, too big of a story to be ignored by readers of New Adult, Adult, and Contemporary Fiction. The depth of See All the Stars makes it feel very real, making me not only empathize with the characters, but also reevaluate my own personal experiences, putting myself in the same shoes. The focus on relationships, lies, truth, and forgiveness made for a very compelling story. The characters are very well developed, made up of layers and flaws, their emotions ruling their decisions. I was able to guess at some of the plot, but the final chapters of the book proved that the true reveal was one worth waiting for. The shock factor was huge and unexpected, but perfect for a novel that makes you care so much for the main character and the hurt that she had gone through. I was incredibly impressed to find that See All the Stars is Kit Frick's debut novel and I really hope to see more from her.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one with Ret."

ARC provided via Netgalley. show less