I just couldn't get into this one. Maybe I will try again, but it just didn't grab me from the beginning and I ended up reading a different book instead.

When a teen is found murdered, members from a small community must deal with the list of possible suspects that include an obsessed classmate and a jealous ex-friend. As the community reels from the event, the officer on the case will need to move past his own issues if he wants to find out who killed the girl. Author Danya Kukafka tries to examine small-town happenings in a novel with an excruciatingly slow pace in the debut book Girl in Snow.

On a February morning in a small Colorado town, someone discovers the body of Lucinda Hayes. A killer has left her on the playground carousel by an elementary school. As word of her murder spreads, the people in the community react with expected horror and grief.

For Cameron Whitley, though, Lucinda’s death feels like a personal affront. He’s never really fit in at school; people have called him names that run the gamut, all because he’s not quite sure what to say and when to say it. But Lucinda showed him kindness a few times, and he loved her. He still loves her, and losing her becomes akin to losing part of himself.

Jade Dixon-Burns allows herself a sense of relief. Serves Lucinda right, she thinks. Jade needed the babysitting job that she and Lucinda shared and that eventually went exclusively to Lucinda. The dead girl had everything, including a perfect family. People who, instead of getting drunk and hitting their kids, actually cared about her.

What’s worse, Lucinda also stole Jade’s best friend. Jade never told Zap how she felt about him, but she always thought she’d have the chance…until the day she spied on Lucinda and Zap together. Jade and Zap had a moment once that could have potentially turned into something else, until Lucinda came along.

Officer Russ Fletcher had the distinct honor of being Lee Whitley’s partner, long before Lee got into trouble himself. Russ and Lee formed a friendship that went beyond the squad car. When Lee commits a crime and ends up leaving town, he makes sure to stop long enough to ask Russ to take care of Cameron.

Now that Cameron is a prime suspect in Lucinda’s murder, Russ is at odds with himself. Everything in the case points to Cameron, but Russ is a good friend. He’ll have to find a way to resolve what the facts indicate with what his gut tells him. If not for Cameron then definitely for Lee, even if Lee is long gone.

Author Danya Kukafka drags almost the entire book out over a mere three days. The choice to focus so much on the day Lucinda is discovered and the two days following means readers will spend time inside of Cameron, Russ, and Jade’s heads for almost a minute-by-minute examination. In a bid, most likely, to attract readers who prefer literary fiction, every emotion and relevant memory of these three characters gets scrutinized. The resulting heaviness weighs the book down so much it drags to a lull before the killer’s identity is revealed, which will disappoint readers not only for who did it but also how it happened.

Kukafka has a way with words, yes, but readers can only take so much pretty prose before getting impatient with the sluggish plot. With the book’s billing as a thriller, readers will be waiting on tenterhooks for the story to get started. By the time it does, the book ends and so will the patience of readers expecting something else.

I recommend readers Bypass Girl in Snow.

I decided to read this book because I liked the premise and I do like a good murder mystery so I was excited about reading the book. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

This book is character-driven and the pace is really slow because the entire focus is on the narrators. The story is told through three main POVs; Cameron, Jade and Russ, complex characters, all battling their own demons. At the heart of the story, there is a murder case. Through the characters, we finally get to learn how Lucinda Hayes lost her life.

Although this is a murder mystery, I didn’t feel the suspense and tension that usually comes with the genre. I couldn’t connect with Lucinda, maybe because the story begins when she is already dead. In addition, the focus on the characters dragged the story. The writing was beautiful and the setting (small town) interesting but the story wasn’t for me. Fans of character-driven stories who don’t mind a slow paces are more likely to enjoy this one.

This is the story of the mysterious death of Lucinda. She was a popular girl who is found murdered on the playground. This story is told through the eyes of three different people.

Cameron, the quiet boy who loved or still loves her. He would stand outside her house and watch her at night. They had very few interactions but he thinks she loved him. Jade, the loner girl who wished Lucinda away for stealing the best parts of her life and Russ. Russ is a patrol police officer who is looking into the murder case.

As you read you see how they all intertwine into each other's lives. Was Lucinda the golden girl everyone thought she was or did she have secrets of her own? We do not get a lot of information about Lucinda, mainly just flashbacks from everyone's past interactions with her. The book is well written and definitely worth the read.

I had high expectations when I started this novel, but it fell flat. It went on and on... I thought it would never end. Very boring. Longwinded descriptions and uninteresting characters. I found this novel lacking cohesiveness.

An enjoyable novel with a gripping plot. Would not have believed it was a debut novel as the author writes so well. Great!!

On a frozen, snow-covered morning, the body of popular high school student Lucinda Hayes is found in a local park. In the small Colorado neighbourhood, everyone knew Lucinda – and everyone is affected by her death, whether they liked her or not.

Girl in Snow is narrated by three characters with connections to Lucinda. Cameron is an anxious, unpopular boy who was obsessed with Lucinda – he drew detailed portraits of her and watched her through her bedroom window at night. Jade is an edgy girl with an alternative style, whose alcoholic mom and miserable home life make her jealous of Lucinda’s seemingly perfect world – she also admittedly hated Lucinda for stealing her babysitting job. Finally, Russ is the officer in charge of investigating Lucinda’s murder, and he also has a strong connection to the family of his main suspect, Cameron.

Each character works to expose the others’ secrets while confronting their own emotions as they all search for the truth about Lucinda’s death. The novel explores how people can see us and interpret our lives in different ways, while never knowing the truth about who we are – not just Lucinda, but all of the characters are judged by who they appear to be. Cameron expresses himself through his artwork, while Jade’s sections often shift into her dramatic screenplay in which she envisions the scenes that she wishes had taken place, and the conversations that sounded better in her mind.

Lucinda could have been killed by anyone in her small suburb, but as more backstory is revealed through the eyes of different narrators, the identity of the murderer becomes inevitable. This novel is ostensibly a mystery-thriller, but the focus is ultimately on character development. The only exception is Lucinda, who remains fairly flat, but she acts as a device to bring everyone else together. The story is written in clear, concise prose, yet it is saturated with depth and emotion – Kukafka’s words are evocative without being overly descriptive. As the characters become increasingly intertwined, they show the unknown connections between all of us – and how appearances can be deceiving.

I received this book from Simon & Schuster and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is told in three voices and each voice involves you more and more. Super fast paced and sure to be the book everyone talks about for a long time coming. I am curious to see who will option this and how they will make it into a movie.

I was intrigued by the <I>Girl in Snow</I> because it was described as a suspense and mystery novel. The more I read, the more I realized it was not. Just because it was centered around Lucinda, a beautiful young teenager, who was murdered, does not in fact mean that the book will then provide a mystery to be solved while reading.

Instead what the reader gets is more of a character development of the three lead potential (but not official) suspects. They are definitely not the investigators suspects, nor are they all the characters that will tell the story of this girl's life. Yes, they are intertwined in unexpected ways with each other but not necessarily with Lucinda.

I went into this book expecting suspense, but what I got was a depressing character study on three lonely people. It was well written under these terms but has a lot of work to make it part of the murder/mystery/suspense genre.

I found this to be just an ok book. The story was slow in developing and bogged down at times. The ending was rather anticlimatic in my view. The basic thread with Cameron was just too implausible. Hopefully the author's next book will show an improvement.

Girl in the Snow is billed as a thriller, but falls short of that category. A suburban teenage murder told from several perspectives, ultimately it was a sluggish read. It was difficult to invest in the plot and care about the characters.

Well, it took a looonngg time to get to the end of this book. Thank you to Netgalley and Publishers, Simon and Shuster for the perusal. I wanted to love it, but I didn't. While it was beautifully written, I just didn't care for the story.

THis book kept me guessing throughout. I did not expect the ending and loved the ride this book took me on.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an advance copy of Danya Kukafka's debut novel, Girl in Snow, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT - A Colorado suburb is rattled by the mysterious and brutal death of high school student Lucinda Hayes. No one is sure who has committed the crime, but as it is being investigated, suspicion falls on several people in the town. What happens when evidence is flimsy, no one seems to have a real motive, yet odd behavior casts suspicion?

LIKE- Kukafka isn't just a debut author, but she is also a very young debut author. She is currently in her early twenties, but she started writing Girl in Snow at sixteen. I'm blown away and a tad envious of her talent. What stands out the most is her writing style. She writes in a direct manner with amazing sensory descriptions that avoid being flowery. On top of that, her descriptions are unusual and creative. I love the way her mind works. She packs a punch with her prose.

Speaking of her words, the title is pitch perfect. Rather than the obvious "Girl in the Snow", Girl in Snow is succinct and it plays into Cameron's artistic inclinations. His obsession with Lucinda is artistic in nature and when she breaks the third wall to interact with him, he almost doesn't know how to handle her. Girl in Snow sounds like the title of a painting. It's perfect.

Perhaps because Kukafka wrote Girl in Snow as a teenager, she has a knack for writing the teenage characters. Kukafka writes them in a way that instantly brought me back to my high school years. It's affecting and even a little unsettling. Girl in Snow is told through three perspectives : Cameron: an artistic high school student from a troubled family, Jade: a high school outcast who was childhood friends with Lucinda, and Russ: a police officer with connections to Cameron's family.

I was most intrigued by the character of Cameron, who is immediately a suspect because of several factors that are beyond his control. Cameron's father was once a police officer and Russ' partner on the force, but he was put on trial for murdering a woman and when he wasn't convicted, he left town, abandoning his family. Cameron is extra sensitive; a kid who sees and feels everything. He is also very much an outsider, and prior to Lucinda's murder, one of her friends openly labeled Cameron as a kid who would bring a gun to school. Cameron doesn't help himself by exhibiting odd behavior, such as staring into his neighbor's houses at night, watching them, including Lucinda's house prior to her death. Cameron has black-outs, rendering him unsure as to whether or not he may have actually killed her. Cameron is a character who has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

DISLIKE- I don't often read mysteries, but I was disappointed that I could figure out the culprit from the first time they are introduced. I'm not going to spoil it, just to say that it was heavy- handed enough to figure out. I was hoping that I would be wrong, but when it was revealed, it was not a surprise. The best mysteries are the ones that you can't anticipate. 

I thought the plot was a little messy, especially with the character of Russ and his wife. It was all wrapped up in the end, but I wasn't convinced or engaged with where it was heading through most of the story. Perhaps because it distracted from the mystery of Lucinda. I thought it bogged down the pacing. The pacing was very strong for the first 2/3 and then it lagged in the last 1/3.

RECOMMEND- Yes, primarily due to Kukafka's marvelous writing. Girl in Snow is a solid mystery, but beyond this first book, I'm certain that Kukafka will have a bright career as a writer. I will definitely read her next book.

The story starts when a popular high school student, Lucinda, is found dead. This extremely well written murder mystery is told from the prospective of the boy who stalked the victim, the girl who hated her, and a police officer investigating her death. This is a very sad book, but I found myself completely enveloped by it. I was almost more interested in what was going on with these three characters than with who killed Lucinda. Almost. Very well done and I will definitely read this author again!

It was pretty good until the end, when it got weird. I like the whole philosophical, this is what we learned from this situation, type ending, but this didn't really pull it off. It was just kind of disconnected.

Unfortunately, I found this book to be a bit slow for the expectation I had set for myself from the description. However, I found I ended up likely the character development more with the meandering plot. Girl in Snow has an air of YA because of the ages of the characters the reader follows: almost a Thirteen Reasons Why vibe.

The authors descriptions of the teenagers, their lives, and their homes were definitely on point. The older characters came off as a bit flat, in my opinion. I loved how Kukafka described lower middle class living in such subtle and poignant ways: Descriptions of people's bedrooms, dirty kitchens, stained carpet.

Overall, this novel is just not in my genre wheelhouse. I would recommended it to anyone interested YA, suspense, and family drama.

Let me start by saying that this is not a thriller, even though that is how it is being marketed. This is best described as a character-driven story. It is slower paced and revolves completely around the perspectives and experiences of Russ, Cameron, and Jade. While I thought the novel was thought-provoking and interesting, I felt that there was a lack of connection with the characters, especially Lucinda. The murder faded away into the background and while this isn't really something that bothers me at all times, I didn't feel as if the novel or story had enough to keep me interested. I quite liked Jade and Cameron's characters as they at least had some tangible connection to Lucinda. However, Russ was a misnomer in that he really wasn't a necessary component of the story. In fact, he was an officer who really didn't do much in terms of solving the murder, and that really bothered me. Overall, this was an interesting take on a murder mystery, where the story focused more on the characters. However, there was a lack of connection between me and the characters and the plot really didn't have any movement. For those reasons, this novel gets 2.5/5 stars from me.

This book was interesting because it dealt with separate characters who had one thin in common. They had a relationship with the victim that triggered a past episode in their lives. It will not end the way you think and it is a book that you need all the way through in order to understand the ending.

Some books are just not for everyone. I've seen reviews all over the spectrum for this book. However, it just didn't do it for me. I think one of the main factors was the characters. I didn't feel like I could connect with any of the characters in the book. I kept pushing through because I wanted to know who killed Lucinda.

I would definitely give the author another chance. This one wasn't my favorite, but even if you have the sweetest peach, someone isn't going to like peaches.