Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone

Starred review from June 4, 2012
“In a small town, unexplained tragedy can only go so long before it grows teeth, sprouts sharp claws, and turns, snarling, on its own self.” On the night of Becca’s high school graduation, her boyfriend, James, has sex with her in the back of his truck, then dumps her. The next day, the body of an unknown girl is found on the side of the road. The brunt of Rosen-field’s debut novel focuses on Becca, both in the present and in flashbacks that take readers through her romance with James, interrupted with occasional chapters that reveal Amelia’s last night alive. Becca, who has always longed to leave town, feels stagnant and wounded as she and James reconcile. Before Amelia died, she had just graduated college and was driving to Cape Cod with her boyfriend, the world opening before her. This layered and exquisitely written story explores the fallout from the murder as well as the dark side of love. Actions have real consequences in Rosenfield’s novel, and her suffocating smalltown setting is powerfully and chillingly evoked. Ages 14–up. Agent: Yfat Reiss Gendel, Foundry Literary + Media.

Starred review from June 15, 2012
The lives of two girls on the cusp of something bigger intertwine on a dusty road in a small, dead-end New England town. Amelia has just finished college and is on her way to a summer beach rental with her boyfriend before going to acting school. Becca, just graduated from high school, is looking forward to college and an escape from the "unbearable small-town shit." Just hours before Amelia is beaten and left for dead, Becca's boyfriend breaks up with her--right after they have sex in the bed of his pickup. As the summer goes on, Bridgeton buzzes with excitement at the murder, while Amelia's body lies in the morgue, unidentified. Becca finds herself morbidly, disastrously fascinated with the investigation even as she tries to sort out her feelings about her future. Becca's first-person narration is occasionally interspersed with third-person flashbacks of Amelia's last days, and while her end is never in doubt, watching the events that lead up to it will mesmerize readers. Rosenfield nails the dynamics peculiar to a small town with a large, wealthy summer population, the uneasy civic relationship mirroring both Amelia's and Becca's emotional negotiations. Her language is precise and vivid; Becca struggles to imagine "the crunch of future feet over fallen leaves shot through with orange and ochre." A perceptive, contrapuntal character study with a light thriller flavor--utterly compelling. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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August 1, 2012

Gr 10 Up-The book opens the night after graduation when 18-year-old salutatorian Becca finds herself tangled up in the legs and arms of her boyfriend James, a high school dropout, in the back of a pickup truck. The story is set in a quiet New England town where everyone knows everyone else's business. College-bound Becca is in love with James, who fears losing another person in his life as he did his mother, so after their sexual encounter, he dumps her, knowing that she is going on to bigger things and leaving him behind. The next day, news breaks that a dead girl, Amelia Anne, was found murdered near where Becca and James rendezvoused. The news of this murder causes Becca to question her faith in her small town and the outside world. She is not sure how she became so naive over the years and begins seeing people and places she has known her whole life in a new light. The gripping story goes back and forth between Becca's and Amelia's perspectives. Only readers know how much the two girls have in common, and they will relate to their struggles with finding themselves and their relationships with boys. The murder mystery unfolds with a dark twist that may need to come a bit quicker to keep all readers interested, but mature teens who enjoy relatable characters will stay tuned.-Karen Alexander, Lake Fenton High School, Linden, MI

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 After just graduating from college, Amelia was headed off with her boyfriend for a summer on the Cape, but when her mangled body is found by a highway, a New England town will never be the same. For local teen Becca, whose dropout boyfriend breaks up with her post-sex with a curt We're done, Amelia's tragic death is one more factor that causes her to retreat and lose sight of her once solid future. Told in chapters that alternate between Becca's first-person account and a third-person view of Amelia's last days, Rosenfield's lyrical debut captures the suffocation and collective thinking inherent in small towns, where unexplained tragedy can only go on so long before it grows teeth, sprouts sharp claws, and turns, snarling, on its own self. Vivid prose and evocatively described scenes create lovely writing, but the novel's pace slows to a crawl at times, making this more about the characters' internal conflicts than an action-driven story. Patient readers will be rewarded with a gripping conclusion, however, as both girls dramatically play out their final scenes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013
Becca's plan was to escape her small town for college. But after graduation her boyfriend dumps her and a girl is found murdered. Spiraling downward, Becca numbs herself with self-pity, alcohol, and insidious small-town gossip. Her self-destruction seems shallow, but alternating chapters reveal the town's troubled history and the victim's life, adding dimension to the murder mystery and to Becca's identity struggle.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)