ARC Review: This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston
This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston releases on November 15th and we would like to thank you to Disney-Hyperion for an eARC provided from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. There is also a pre-order incentive and giveaway where you can find all the details on twitter!
This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston
Category: Young Adult, Contemporary, Mystery
Publication: November 15th, 2016; Disney-Hyperion
Purchase: Amazon
No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won’t say who fired the shot that killed their friend; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them.
Kate Marino’s senior year internship at the District Attorney’s Office isn’t exactly glamorous—more like an excuse to leave school early that looks good on college applications. Then the DA hands her boss, Mr. Stone, the biggest case her small town of Belle Terre has ever seen. The River Point Boys are all anyone can talk about. Despite their damning toxicology reports the morning of the accident, the DA wants the boys’ case swept under the rug. He owes his political office to their powerful families.
Kate won’t let that happen. Digging up secrets without revealing her own is a dangerous line to walk; Kate has her own reasons for seeking justice for Grant. As she and Stone investigate—the ageing prosecutor relying on Kate to see and hear what he cannot—she realizes that nothing about the case—or the boys—is what it seems. Grant wasn’t who she thought he was, and neither is Stone’s prime suspect. As Kate gets dangerously close to the truth, it becomes clear that the early morning accident might not have been an accident at all—and if Kate doesn’t uncover the true killer, more than one life could be on the line…including her own.
Review:
[book rating=4/5]The River Point Boys – a group of five rich kids – go hunting one morning. And the nightmare of all nightmares (and every parent’s worst fear) happens. Only four come back alive. One boy is dead. And it seems like one of the others did it. Was it a horrible accident? Or was it something more sinister?
This Is Our Story is told from two points of view. One is Kate, a senior who interns with the DA office. The other? The guilty party. The two are woven together perfectly, so much so, that I couldn’t really figure out WHO had done it. Mixed in are interviews by police of the boys and other kids that had been at the party the night before the event. Because for as close as the River Point Boys were, it seemed things were breaking apart. And with all this info I’d lean towards one boy, then switch, then switch again until I’d run through all the remaining boys several times. I thought maybe it was someone else and the anonymous voice was being used to throw us off. But I can’t lie, I didn’t guess the who by the end – nor did I guess the reason.
I really liked the characters. All are well fleshed out and complex. And in a book that features this many characters, it should be hard to do. Somehow, Elston knocked it out of the park. I really felt I could differentiate between the River Point Boys quite well.
The author also manages to toss a romance in there. I know this shouldn’t seem important, but it is. It’s pretty difficult to incorporate into a book of this type, but it worked so well. And it’s so brilliantly done that I didn’t even SEE IT COMING! I loved that I still had mixed feelings due to the events surrounding the two. Their text message exchanges added even MORE to the story.
This Is Our Story is easily one of my favorite books this year. I loved the elements of mystery and suspense. I loved the romance. I loved everything.
