Fine focuses on the story of Katie, whose sister Anna disappeared when six years ago. In the present day, Katie is really struggling, and decides to look into her sister's disappearance. The story is told from both Katie's perspective and through Anna's case file. In the process of her investigation, she discovers secrets about her parents and her sister.

There were a couple of loose ends that have me scratching my head. For example, things are hinted at about Anna' and her father's relationship, but never revealed. Similarly, you never really find out what happened to Anna. It left me feeling like I missed something from the book. I actually went back to read parts of it make sure I didn't just gloss over important details, but no, they aren't there.

Overall, an enjoyable YA mystery/thriller, but the ending felt a little unfinished.

This review will appear on my blog & Goodreads on October 17, 2020.

Trigger warnings: Eating disorders, drug use, mental health struggles.

Introduction

Six years ago, Katie's sister Anna disappeared. Katie was 12 at the time, and Anna was 18. Because Katie was so young when Anna disappeared, there was a lot that she didn't understand. Katie has never truly gotten over the disappearance of Anna, and now that Katie is 18, she feels like she's been in the dark about the details about her sister's case for too long, and she begins spending time at her local police station, looking through Anna's files. Through evidence and personal items collected in her police file, Katie soon begins to realize that she maybe didn't know Anna as well as she thought she did.

Format

The story is told almost completely through media found in Anna's police file, like diary entries, transcribed interviews, reports, text messages, and emails. I absolutely love when books use elements like this to tell a story. However, these media pieces took up more of the book than I thought. It is the only way that Anna's story is unraveled. Very little of the story takes place in the present, so we don't see very much of Katie's life as it is now. If I had to estimate, I'd say that maybe 30 pages of the book are dedicated to what Katie is doing in her life, besides sifting through police reports.

Characters

Because most of the story is told through Anna's file and very little of the story is actually focused on Katie, I had a hard time caring about her. We don't learn very much about her personality besides the fact that she harbors a lot of anger, about what happened to her sister and otherwise.

From the little that we do see of Katie in her personal life, I found her to be annoying. She was written more like a 14-15 year old than an 18 year old. She has very childish tendencies that I wouldn't expect somebody of that age to do, such as almost run her car off the road when she had a passenger that was only trying to help her, lashing out when she's asked about college, or stealing a customer's smoothie when she got fired from her job. In a way, I am sort of glad that most of the book was just sifting through Anna's file at the police station, because Katie is set up to be a very annoying protagonist.

Just as I didn't learn enough about Katie to care about her, I didn't learn enough about Jack, Katie's neighbor and love interest, to care about him or their budding romance.

Plot

There were some parts of the book that I felt were never actually resolved or fully developed. There were several instances where a falling out was mentioned between Anna and her father, but what the rift was about was never disclosed. Since the falling out apparently played such a big role in her emotional turmoil, I would have liked to have known what actually happened.

Spoilers ahead!

I feel like I was a little bit mislead plot-wise in general. For the entire book, it seems that Katie and her family don't know where Anna is/what happened to her, but when the ending comes, it is apparent that they do know what what happened to her/where she is, but they don't know why she ended up how she did. I understand why it had to be written that way, but because the official synopsis of book seems to allude to a bit more of a mystery, finding out that all the characters knew Anna's fate all along felt a little anticlimactic.

Conclusion

This book was okay, but I probably wouldn't pick it up again due to the lack of character depth and slightly disappointing ending, but it was okay and is suitable if you're just looking for a quick read that has the interesting elements of diary entries, emails, text messages, etc.

Fair warning, this is not a light and easy book. It will put you through the emotional wringer. There are a lot of extremely serious and deep topics touched on. We follow Katie as she deals with the emotional toll of her sister's disappearance 6 years prior. The main portion of the book is told through the police file as Katie reads it. It's a difficult read but worth it.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Fine in exchange for an honest review.

Fine was fine conceptually, in practice it just wasn't enough. Following our personalityless protagonist Katie as she looks back on the disappearance of her sister Anna 6 years prior, Fine is a mixed medium 'mystery' that turns out to be a lot less mystery, a lot more character study. This book doesn't have much in the way of plot which is fine because I'm pretty sure its supposed to serve mostly as a study of Anna and the teen experience as a whole, but neither Anna or Katie felt like actual teenagers so as a commentary, it fell really short. There's a semblance of being a teenager, but its all overblown to the point of it really sounding like an adult talking about their fears of what teenagers are doing instead of what teens are actually doing. Anna, Katie, and their friends also all speak and process events and relationships as if they were a lot younger than their actual ages which heightens the divide between them and actual teens.

I normally like mixed medium, but it didn't work here. This book uses a lot of records of interviews done in the investigation of Anna's disappearance to introduce characters and plot elements, but it always felt a lot more like the author outlining plot points than actual interview transcripts (for example, the transcript includes details like dramatic sighs that I highly doubt appear in actual police transcripts. Keep in mind I read an early copy so that specific example may change). Whenever we read a transcript I found it impossible to forget that I was reading a book someone had written and it made it even harder to see anyone as actual characters.

I enjoyed this book. The summary of this one really.caught my eye.
I opened the book and got a fee chapters in and this was not what I was expecting at all!
Don't get me wrong, it was a fast quick read. It just wasn't what I thought. Which was a little disappointing.
I enjoyed the characters. The plot.
Overall it was ok.

Thank You NetGalley Publisher and Author for this copy!

Fine by Amylea Murphy is the story of a sudden unexplained disappearance of 17-year-old Anna. She was a straight-A student, a cheerleader, and an all-rounder who had no reason to run away or disappear. The story is set from the perspective of Katie, her sister, who was 12-years-old when Anna went missing. She is now 17-years-old and attempts to find out more about her sister and her disappearance. She starts probing into her police report file and discovers more and more about her family’s past and finds out about the real Anna.
Information about her through her police reports is written in the form of diary entries, transcription records of phone calls with family and friends which was very interesting to read. The book discussed various issues related to teenagers and their mental health during these growing years.

“Our eyes are being opened to war, racism, and poverty. We’re learning about complicated issues of climate change, technology, and all kinds of other things that are wholly out of our control. We’re wondering how the adults in charge haven’t found a way to solve any of it. And while we contemplate all this, we’re trying to have some fun and make some memories.”

The story was a bit incomplete and in some places. Anna’s relationship with her dad has been very good but suddenly she started to hate him and he started ignoring him. However, there is no context as to how she has a sudden change of feelings. The plot was a bit slow-paced but I guess that is how the story was set.

Otherwise, the theme of the story is very important and relevant in today’s society and that message has been very well delivered. If some plot holes were fixed, this would have been a phenomenal read.

~★~ What is this book about? ~★~

Six years ago, Katie's older sister disappeared without a trace. Katie can't fathom why Anna would have a reason to run, and hates the thought of something horrible having happened to her.
It feels like forever since that day, and the mystery of Anna's disappearance was never solved.
Katie wants the truth, and decides the best way to find it will be looking through her sister's case file.

~★~

From the beginning, I was really interested in the premise of this book. I was looking forward to uncovering the mystery of Anna, as well as how her sister was managing her absence. While this was partially delivered, I feel I didn't get to know Katie well enough, and instead learned mostly about Anna from reading her case files.

AmyLea Murphy's writing made for a quick and easy time reading. While it didn't stand out much from other contemporaries, I can't complain about it. I did like the formatting of journal entries and audio transcriptions as a method of piecing together Anna's character.

While this book wasn't necessarily outstanding, nor did it bring anything new to the table, I did find myself engaged in the story and curious as to how things would play out. There are definitely people who will enjoy this one!

While I enjoyed this book, I felt that there were a lot of Important incomplete pieces to the story.
It definitely had potential to be great but just fell a little flat.
Katie’s sister Anna went missing 6 years ago and decides to go through the police file of her case. Throughout the book we get to know Anna while we only hear from Katie in short pieces (it was actually enjoyable that even though Katie is the one still alive and we’re seeing things unfold through her eyes, we instead get to know Anna more from the interrogations of friends, text messages, and diary entries)

The book talks about Anna’s relationship with her father and how at one point it was great and then suddenly took a sharp turn, the author never tells us why this happened and just felt like something that either should have been left out or explained further.

The end seemed very rushed and didn’t seem like we found out anything. Did she kill herself? Did she run away? Was she abducted? We have no idea.

I really did enjoy how Anna responds “I’m fine” to people even though inside she truly isn’t. I feel that on SUCH a deep level. It’s easier to say I’m fine than to spill what you’re really feeling. I feel like Anna felt as if she didn’t have anyone she thought truly cared to hear how she really was, she felt like they’re asking to be nice. She didn’t see that some of those people truly did care about her until it was too late.

Overall I did enjoy this book, I was hoping for a little more mystery but it was a quick read and kept me intrigued by the Interesting format of the book.

I was provided a free ARC courtesy of Netgalley. I’m undecided on whether I liked this book or not. It was very readable and the format of the writing was interesting since it incorporated diary entries, police reports, interviews, and text exchanges. However, with that being said, the ending came a little out of left field and I wasn’t sure whether we were supposed to take away that the main character knew her sister’s whereabouts all along or not.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for my copy of this book.

This book was well written and easy to get into. I would definitely recommend it.

I loved this book! Fine kept me intrigued and invested with the characters till the last page. I loved how the story was told in mixed media and even included pictures.

It was my first YA novel that I would have given all the 5 stars to but there were so many pertinent incomplete bits that made it fall short of a great read. It breaks my heart to say I give it just 3 stars, it had the potential to be a knock your socks of kind of a book.

If you liked 13 Reasons Why, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and the trope of a missing sister and all the proceedings that happen to decrypt the how and why and what in the disappearance and the fragile mindset of adolescents and teenagers , you should read this book.

Teenagers are the most misunderstood people , they are treated like children and expected to act like adults. Its mind numbingly befuddling and complicated being teenagers. The story starts off by Katie Williams an 18 year old who terribly misses her elder sister, her everything who mysteriously disappeared 6 years ago without any trace. Katie hasn't been able to make peace with it and now that she is not just a flimsy 12 year old kid but an 18 year old she decides to dive deep and find the real truth about her beloved sister, ANNA WILLIAMS.

Anna is a high power, straight As, high achiever, dutiful daughter, doting and very loving dream sister one could have. She is IMPECCABLE on the outside, being what is expected of her as a young woman. She feels putting her needs is being a LOSER or a weak person and shies away from being herself and always puts the "I AM FINE" act always for everyone. But deep down, she is into smithereens, shattered, broken, coming apart. She writes her true feelings in a diary.

What I liked:

- Fast paced, relatable, articulate

- The book is filled with diary page entires, emails, real SMS texts, flyers, police reports so it gives a very authentic reading experience. Loved it!

- The love and relationship between the sisters is adorable and sweet. Likeable main characters.

What I didnt like:

It breaks my heart when I love a book this much and it has these low blows and unanswered subplots in there.

- Why did Anna start hating her dad suddenly and go from being a daddy's girl to just literally banging and bruising her head after a phone conversation with him? WHY? That was never addressed in the entire story, not even in the end.

- The end was rushed and seemed anti climatic. An epilogue would be good.

I would love to read more of her books as I liked it nonetheless. Its a decent read.

Its easier to say "I AM FINE", when people ask. "HOW ARE YOU", because they don't really care and don't want to be troubled by someone's dirty laundry. Thats the harsh truth. So you just tell them whats easier and what they WANT TO HEAR which is FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.

“Fine” is a young adult book centered around a woman named Katie Williams, whose older sister – Anna – suddenly disappeared, and most of the story is centered around Katie, her family, and the police trying to figure out what happened to Anna.

This was a pretty quick read for me, but it definitely wasn’t an easy one. This book mentions a lot of difficult subjects throughout that could possibly be triggering to some, and it’s undoubtedly a very heavy read, but regardless, I still really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

I haven't been a teenager for some years now, but this book reminded me of all my sassy inner thoughts. I really loved the mystery aspect of this book. I thought the pages that looked like actual documents were awesome, really brought me into the experience. I highly recommend.

Definitely a little too angsty for me but it definitely captured the mind and processing of a damaged teenager. I would probably just describe this book as "okay" because it just didn't do a lot for me but it also didn't bore me to death.

This book was actually pretty enjoyable. It wasn't a genre I normally read, it bordered mystery, which I normally avoid. I'm not sure why, because I still really enjoyed this, and will probably go back and reread it.

Blurb
Six years ago, Anna Williams—straight-A student and all-around golden child—vanished.

Ever since, her sister Katie has drifted through life, wracked with grief and anger. But when her own future reaches a breaking point, Katie takes the disappearance into her own hands.


I think the format of this was a unique way to explore the mystery of Anna's disappearance. We didn't really get much from Katie's perspective, most of the book was documents from the police file. This was really a great way to go about it, because I felt like I really got to know Anna, so I was more invested in finding her.

I also really liked how every interview and journal entry gave us a different side of Anna. We saw the way her sister viewed her, how her family viewed her, and how her separate friend groups viewed her. I felt like it was a great way to introduce us to her life, and it really tackled the issue of how well people can hide their true feelings.

As someone who has never suffered from mental illness, or been close to anyone who has, I can't speak for how well it was handled in this book. From the best of what I know, it was written well. I appreciated how there was no concrete answer, no real reason why Anna disappeared, it was a combination of all factors.

The ending of this was actually pretty surprising, it broke pretty far from the format of normal mystery books. As we got closer to it, I was sort of expecting it, but I was hoping it may end different. Even though it didn't end the way I was expecting, I found it to be a super fulfilling ending. I love how Katie confronted her grief on her own terms, and learned to deal with it. I really liked this book!

Thanks to AmyLea Murphy and Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review

Fine is a nice read for its targeted audience and has enough to make you keep page turning however fans of Sadie etc might find it doesn’t pack the same punch they are looking for . I felt the ending was also a bit misleading but overall it’s a nice little read for over the weekend and I look forward to seeing more from AmyLea Murphy .

I felt a bit mislead by the ending, but I guess that was to be expected for how the story needed to play out. I enjoyed how the texts and format of the files were included as it made it feel more authentic. While I'm not the target demographic for this novel, I felt that the author did a good job of voicing the emotions that come with being a teenager.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.