A 15 year old girl is found dead on a snowy morning. She is beautiful, and loved by most. The story is told from the perspective of Cameron, a lanky guy who is not so secretly obsessed with Lucinda. Jade, a girl who everyone ignores, who hates Lucinda and Russ, a cop- a friend of Cameron's missing father.
The story is a web of interconnected events, a web of interconnected stories. I had to go back and read the blurb once again, wasn't this book about the mysterious death of Lucinda? Because the book is barely about the death itself.
It dwells into the life of Cameron , who's dad goes away after being a cop and a suspect. He is odd to say it simply. He doesn't have many friends, but art is his best companion. His description of the simplest things are complex- that's how he is.
Jade is a typical teenager who hates her body, who hates everyone who is pretty. She is in love with Lucinda's boyfriend, she has all reasons to hate her.
Russ is yet another twisted character. His best friend and companion Lee abandons everyone-how does this impact him? His marriage seems to be an arrangement of convenience, is there love ?
The book was a very long read. I enjoy details, but the details in this book are far too many. Sometimes these details stand out, sometimes I just skipped through them because they just dragged the book on for no apparent reason.
There were parts that give you a peek at a person's life who is mentally stressed. It gives glimpses of people's lives who are struggling with their identiies. There is barely anything about the death, the murder. Lucinda is a barely threaded into the story- just cause.
At the end, I couldn't be bothered about who killed her, or why. The other characters overpowered the plot so much that the thriller bit is completely lost.
Overall, a book that I partly enjoyed. But am still looking for the thriller element.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review this ARC of Girl in Snow.

Lucinda Hayes, beloved HS student is found murdered in a sleepy town where crime rarely happens. Through a mixed matched quilt of characters, especially three in particular, we are able to find how it happened through the events leading up to the murder. Jade, a rebel without a cause who has a bark worse than her bite. Cameron, a neighbor who took way too much advantage of his view to her home, And Russ, an officer who, while not assigned to the murder, is definitely linked. Who is responsible for Lucinda's murder, and why?

Hmm, I've read a lot of books like this, and on paper, this seems like the kind of thing that I would just gobble up. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why this book left a sour taste in my mouth, it just did. Perhaps the ending was a bit too weaksauce. The story a bit too disjointed, and (Roxane Gay would smack me for saying this) the characters were just not likable enough for me. When you read a story and most of the characters tick you off, it's that much harder to get into the story. I'm sorry to say that this was a miss for me.

Thanks, NetGalley for the ARC - unfortunately i wasn’t able to read this one.

Rating: 1.5/5

Genre: Thriller (more about this in the review)

Recommended Age: 16+ (violence, witchcraft, stalking, murder)

I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched—not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters—Cameron, Jade, and Russ—must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth, or both. In crystalline prose, Danya Kukafka offers a brilliant exploration of identity and of the razor-sharp line between love and obsession, between watching and seeing, between truth and memory.

Compulsively readable and powerfully moving, Girl in Snow offers an unforgettable reading experience and introduces a singular new talent in Danya Kukafka.

In the wake of Murder on the Orient Express becoming a movie, I had an itching for some thrillers. One I’ve had on my to-read list was this book. The synopsis sounded good and so I decided to give it a try. In the end I had to DNF this book. The good points about this book is that it’s not a typical thriller and it has more of a YA feel to it. The book focuses on the suspects rather than the crime. The book was interesting in that it left the reader in suspense on who the actual perpetrator was. However, those were the only things I thought were good about the book.

I had a hard time reading this book because of how drawn-out the writing was. The author constantly went off on tangents and the author seems to have the Stephen King syndrome of writing in which an author will write for awhile on a topic in the book that has no point to the plot whatsoever. It became very hard to wade through all of the detail to get to the meat of the story and it was the main reason I DNF’d the book. Because of how the book was written, the plot and pacing heavily suffered from the writing. The plot was lost in the words and the pacing drew to a standstill at several times in the book. The characters in the book were also not very well developed at the point I stopped reading and they were very weird choices for main characters (2 of them being high schoolers) considering that this book was supposed to be an adult thriller. The victim is not a character I found myself to care about and the professionals in this book seemed to be way too dumb to be realistic. The book really shouldn’t have been marketed as a thriller because you spend more time on the suspects and not on the crime. This book also switches between multiple POVs.

Verdict: Overall, I found this book to not be my cup of tea. It was the opposite of everything I hoped for and skimming the back it seems like the ending and the killer is a cliché type character. I think this book could have been rewrote in so many different ways and it really could have been better if it focused on the crime rather than the daily lives of the suspects. Give this book a try if you want to read something different than your usual thriller.

I am unable to provide a review of this title because it was lost upon the updating of my kindle.

I really wanted to like this one, but I just couldn't get into it. I've tried to go back to it several times and each time I lose interest really quickly. Unfortunately, it is going to have to go in my DNF pile.

I didn’t love this one. I thought the writing was off somehow. It felt disjointed. The flow got better towards the end, but never reached a point were I was just really enjoying it.

I thought this was going to be a little more of a mystery or thriller and it was really a character study with a cast of odd characters. Unfortunately, I didn’t love any of those characters. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even love the girl that got killed, so I didn’t really care who killed her. I never got to know her and the parts that told her part of the story didn’t make me care about her.

It was a decent storyline, but the focus didn’t stay on the murder enough and I didn’t enjoy the telling. I was expecting a story that led up to the murder and gave us clues as to how we got there, but mostly it was a character response with some flashback stories told through the character’s perspectives.

The ending occurred quickly and felt like a bit of a cop out. I won’t go into detail for obvious reasons, but I felt let down by the end. I expected a lot more.

Overall, I'm sorry to say, I thought it was just a meh story and a bit disappointing.

This book took me a long time to get into. It just seemed to go at a very slow pace for me and there was really no action until towards the end, and even that wasn't a lot of action, when we actually get to find out what truly what happened to Lucinda.
We are told the story through three different pair of eyes. Which the author did a good job with switching characters. I was not lost on that at all.

Cameron who likes to watch people late at night sounds really creepy. He is also dealing with the fact his dad is not there anymore because of what he did. We see how Cameron believes he might have "untangled" which is a term that he has give himself when he doesn't remember things.

Jade who never liked Lucinda comes very an unhappy home, and knows about Cameron and what he does. She also does a screen play of what she wishes she had said when she is speaking to someone. At first I was kind of like why is this in here? Yet I understood where Jade was coming from. We also have things in our head we really want to say, yet we never do.

Then we have Russ who you can tell has always been in love with Cameron's mom but yet was best friends with his dad. Russ has held secrets about Cameron's dad that he wished he never had. He got the call, "we've got a body" which he hasn't heard while being a cop. Small town doesn't seem to have much crime. As everything starts unraveling it brings back memories of Cameron's dad among other things.

It seems that there might have been a lot of people who wanted Lucinda dead yet when we find out who was behind it you never think about that person.
I will say I was disappointed that we didn't get to really get into Lucinda's life when we find out who the killer was why, did we never get like a clue? Why didn't we get to really know what was inside her journal? It was small things like that, that kind of made it not exciting. You know if a teenage girl is murdered in anyway her life is an opened book yet we never get told much except by Jade and Cameron.
I couldn't really connect with the characters at all. I found myself wondering if the pace of the book was going to pick up.
It was an okay book for me, three stars.

Wow this book took my breath away! So beautifully written.

This book...read more like a character study. Lucinda is found dead on the playground, lightly covered in snow. We then meet Jade, Cameron and Russ - everyone with a little something to hide.

To be honest, even when I read the description I thought "Oh, so...'Everything I Never Told you" again?" and...that's kind of where it sat. Characters fell flat and I didn't really care in the end who killed Lucinda.

Thank to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A fast paced page turner told from different viewpoints. I didn't see the ending coming!

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster and Danya Kukafka for an ARC to review in exchange for an honest review. I was at first intrigued by the cover of the book, Girl in the Snow. After receiving what I anticipated to be a thriller, I found myself less than thrilled. The book is actually more of a study of Cameron, Jade, and Russ, whose names are the most exciting thing about them. At first, I thought it might be more of a YA but I think it would need more excitement to keep my students' attention. I did finish and was in hopes of some fantastic twist, which never happened. Basically, it was a book about a girl that was found dead and 3 others. I wanted to know more about Lucinda!

I'm so sorry - I tried numerous times to ' get into' this book. I even tried the audio version. I wanted to know the whodunit but found the path to the answer just too unsettling to continue. I do thank you for the review copy.

Girl in the Snow is a murder mystery about a girl called Lucinda Hayes. She is found murdered and left out in the snow. The story is told from the point of views of three major characters. First is Cameron, the boy who loved Lucinda from afar. He is known to have stalked her and as such some people have their suspicions about him. Then there is the fact that Cameron cannot remember where he was when Lucinda was murdered. Then there is Jade, a girl with a difficult life only made more difficult by her rebellious nature. She hated Lucinda – a girl who seemed to be loved by one and all. With her troubled home life, Jade always felt that Lucinda had the perfect life and she wanted it for herself. Then there is Russ, the officer in charge of the investigation. With a sketchy past and a promise to keep, Russ has a lot of things he must resolve in order to be able to work on this case properly.

Who would murder the most loved girl in the school? Also, why would someone do it? And just how involved are Cameron and Jade with the case?

The author has done an exemplary job of developing the characters in the book. Each personality is very distinct and I loved the character of Russ the most. There was nothing extraordinary about him yet he stands out in a way that makes the very forgettable character unforgettable. Jade too was developed well – as a girl with a troubled life, it was easy to sympathize with her at many levels. Her confusions and convictions make her what she is. Her quirkiness is in some ways quite endearing. Cameron is probably the only character I couldn’t really connect to though by no fault of the character development. He has stalker tendencies and it makes sense to his character, but I just thought it was creepy.

The plot is well paced. The story takes off immediately and as the various aspects of it are slowly revealed, it becomes clear to the reader how the smallest and mundane details are important to the crux of it. The language and narrative worked well for the book. The author’s attention to details, especially for the setting, makes it easier for the readers to transport into the world.

Girl in Snow is definitely a slow burn. Unfortunately for me, that flame never seemed to get lit. Whilst the story didn't grab me, I can tell the writer is good. The writing is great, the story itself was the letdown. This is entirely personal preference as I think I prefer a more thrilling novel. This just never took off.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Girl in Snow is an interesting story that follows the investigation of Lucinda's murder from three distinctly unique points of views. Kukafka does an excellent job in portraying the personality differences between Cameron, Russ, and Jade with her writing. I truly wasn't able to guess who was actually responsible for Lucinda's death until it was revealed. I did wish this story had more of a thriller aspect to it to add a little extra excitement and anticipation to it, but I still thoroughly enjoyed Kukafka's realistic small town mystery. 

I voluntarily received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks so much for the opportunity but I just couldn't get interested in this one. I gave up around the halfway point but will try again later on.

From the discovery of the body of this young murder victim, the story leads us both forward and back in time to understand the relationships she had with others. An easy read but not so easy to unravel the mystery.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It most certainly kept me guessing until the end and I felt myself turning pages quickly to find out what happened. The characters came alive for me, even with the many different people in the book itself. I would read another book by this author.

Girl in Snow had some really great characters. While it may sound like a mystery, the plot read more as a character study than a straight up murder mystery, which I enjoyed.