A LINE IN THE DARK by Malinda Lo

 

A Line in the Dark by Malinda Lo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love the cover of this book and was intrigued from the first time I saw it. So when I found the hardback on special at Amazon, I grabbed a copy.

Jess Wong cares a lot about her best friend Angie Redmond. More than Angie knows. She doesn't mind hanging out on the sidelines and keeping her true feelings hidden. But when Angie starts seeing a girl called Margot from a nearby boarding school, everything changes. It puts an uncomfortable distance between them, and invites a certain darkness into their seemingly average lives...

I was instantly hooked into Jess's sad and lonely world. A sad world where she's secretly in love with her best friend. And the lonely world it becomes when Angie starts seeing someone. When this happens, Jess changes. It was so unexpected, how easily the story turned from two happy friends who spend heaps of time together, to Jess losing herself in anger and jealousy. To the point of becoming a withering shadow who only finds solace in the comic book she's creating.

The first part in this book is written in the first-person POV of Jess. We get to see the events unfold through her eyes, experience her personal thoughts, and start to understand her uneasy family dynamics. But when I reached the second part, the POV shifted to Jess's third-person POV and a variety of transcripts. A move I wasn't expecting, but certainly turned the story's direction sideways and deepened my interest even further.

I thought this writing style worked so well for this story.

On the surface, Jess seems like a quiet, mousey character who is easy to take advantage of. But she's so much more. Actually, I loved that all the characters were complex and nothing is quite as it first appears.

I really enjoyed this twisty tale of how complicated and toxic teenage friendship between girls can become. How easy it is for secrets and feelings to fester when they keep the truth hidden, and how quickly everything can get totally out of control.

This is such a great book!



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