You'll Be The Death Of Me by Karen M. McManus
Sorry i have been so MIA both on my blog and Twitter, i started my dream job in September and its been a massive adjustment with very little left for blogging never mind a social life! Things will hopefully settle down in the new year and i got start creating some content on here again! (fingers crossed)
So todays post is for 'You'll Be The Death Of Me' by the amazing Karen M. McManus, i was thrilled to receive an e-arc from Penguin organised by the ever amazing Dave (@TheWriteReads), sorry my post is 2 days late, i did start the book a week ago but work kept getting in the way!
The book follows three main characters, Ivy, Cal and Mateo and it starts off very much like Ferris Buellers Day Off. Three childhood friends who drifted apart when they started high school are accidentally thrown together in unlikely circumstances and decide to skip school for the day, all is going well if a little bit awkward until they stumble upon a crime scene. When the victim turns out to be a classmate they flee and try to figure out how and what happened.
Ivy comes from a well to do family but struggles under the pressure of living up to her genius brother. She has spent years struggling under the pressure of doing everything perfectly whilst her brother naturally excels at everything he does. I found Ivy as a character to be the very epitomy of a teenage girl, shes struggling to keep up academically and when she loses her three year in a row class presidency to a kid that really doesnt seem to care she loses it all together and decides that skipping school is a good idea. I wonder how different her story would have turned out if she had only sucked it up and went to school that day.
Mateo was raised by a single mum, when his mum is diagnosed with a joint disorder in the same week she loses her bowling alley business that she built from the ground Mateo has to step it up alongside his cousin Autumn who was taken in when her parents died in a car accident. They work 5 jobs between them to make ends meet and to pay for the medicine that their mum needs. Mateo was a complex character, probably my favourite of the 3 but he wasnt without his flaws either which made him a lot more believeable.
Cal was probably the least developed of the 3 main characters. From the beginning he is harboring a secret that may or may not be linked to the crime scene them stumble upon. I feel like even though i just finished this book i remember very little about Cal or his home life, not sure if thats a me problem or a book problem!
I really enjoyed how this story becomes a journey of how 3 friends need to figure out what is happening before someone else they know is killed. It was fast paced and i know if i had had more time i would have flew through this in probably one sitting! I enjoyed this just as much as McManus' other books and i absolutely adore her story telling style, she has definitely become an auto buy author for me and one i find myself always recommending to other people.
Thank you again to the publishers and to Dave for the awesome blog tour and opportunity to read this book!
