Blind Spot by Laura Ellen Published by Harcourt Children's Books on October 23rd 2012
Pages: 336
Source: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via Netgalley
Add on Goodreads
Amazon•TBD
My Rating:
There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.
Seventeen-year-old Tricia Farni’s body floated to the surface of Alaska’s Birch River six months after the night she disappeared. The night Roz Hart had a fight with her. The night Roz can’t remember. Roz, who struggles with macular degeneration, is used to assembling fragments to make sense of the world around her. But this time it’s her memory that needs piecing together—to clear her name . . . to find a murderer.
This unflinchingly emotional novel is written in the powerful first-person voice of a legally blind teen who just wants to be like everyone else.
Blind Spot was by far one of my most anticipated reads of the year. As soon as I read the synopsis I knew I had to read it, it sounded amazing. Such an interesting plot, and the cover is beautiful to boot. I read it almost as soon as I received it, which is unusual as I normally wait a bit but I could not hold off on this one. The entire story I was hooked, I couldn’t put it down-I just needed to find out who killed Tricia and who was involved. In fact, I was approx 20 pages from the end and I thought I knew how it was going to end so I put it down to go to bed. The next day I was telling a friend about it and said, “…I really like it…there’s no way the book can be ruined in 20 pages”. And it was. There will be mild spoilers in this review. Sorry, I really try to post reviews without spoilers but it’s just necessary in this one.
The main character is Roz, she is legally blind as she suffers from Macular Degeneration and her year is started off by being placed in a special education class to help assist in learning necessary life skills. It is now a mandatory class due to a recent suicide of another special education student. Roz is severely pissed off about this as she feels like she doesn’t belong there so she immediately is at odds with the teacher. In Life Skills she meets Tricia, who is a drug addict. Roz and Tricia aren’t exactly the best of friends but they have a sort of mutual understanding and get along so-so. Roz then starts dating the hottest, most popular boy in school and it all goes downhill from there. Tricia and Roz are at a party one night…and then Roz wakes up the next morning and doesn’t remember a thing. And Tricia is missing. Several months later Tricia’s body is discovered and the search for the person involved is started. And Roz is a prime suspect.
Let’s start off with the characters. I have never disliked a main character like I dislike Roz. First of all, she has absolutely no common sense. She dates the most self-obsessed guy in high school and doesn’t even cast a thought that he may be using her? She claims that she is super independent and she doesn’t need any special help with anything but yet when it comes to Jonathan she turns into the neediest, whiniest, clingy human being imaginable. Ugh. Despite that, until the ending was ruined(which I will get to) I still enjoyed the story, which is very rare for me because if I can’t even like the main character normally it’s a DNF. Also, I could not stand that Greg was so sweet and adored her and she was just not having any of it. I loved Greg though, he was so sweet and tried so hard to get Roz to see that he liked her. My favorite character of all, ironically was Tricia. I thought she was interesting and had a really intriguing manner about her. I really wanted to know what happened in her life. And I enjoyed her sassy attitude.
The story starts off before Tricia goes missing, so you do get to experience Tricia’s personality and that’s great. I’m glad the author didn’t start the story off after that night and work backwards. The entire reason that I hated the story is you never really find out how Tricia dies. I honestly thought I was going to scream when it got to the last page and then…nothing. The entire point of the story was trying to figure out how she died and then NOTHING?! So aggravated. The only part of the ending that I enjoyed was at the prom and I won’t spoil that for anyone that wants to read this.
I give it 2 stars because I did like the story until the ending. Unfortunately because I disliked how it finished so much, I can barely remember why I in fact did enjoy it initially. I think a lot of people will enjoy this book, it just wasn’t for me. I really cannot get past the ending and that is unfortunate because I really was on the edge of my seat waiting for it. On the plus side, if I could give an award for best cover… it would probably go to this one 🙂
[…] Blind Spot by Laura Ellen – 2/5 Stars […]