[Mrs. Y Reviews] Delusions by Amy Crandall

Book Cover via Amazon.com

Twitter is a beautiful place where I have been privileged enough to have in my feed a few authors and what they are writing. One lovely night I was watching Authors chat about their books and stumbled upon "Delusions" by Amy Crandall, so I picked it up.

This isn't an ARC copy, and this isn't a BookTasters review, this is a book I picked up on my own off of Amazon.

What happened after that was a journey of mystery and suspense, and it truly has left me wondering what it is to be a good writer, and the skill it takes to weave together mysteries. Not since Agatha Christie has an author taken me down one path only to turn it on its head like this for me.

Get your pizza guys, make sure you have good friends and whatever you do, do not talk to strangers on Facebook. I hope you enjoy my review of "Delusions" by Amy Crandall.

Opinion

I love murder mysteries. I remember when I was little my grandmother used to enjoy a show called "Murder, She Wrote," and I was hooked. Very rarely though have I found books that sparked my interest in the same way as my nostalgic past when it comes to the genre. Amy does this fantastic thing of blending YA to the murder mystery genre seamlessly and flawlessly. Not at all does this feel like some weird fusion of two things. It feels more like a book that should have been written like it was specifically for what the messages it has in it.

Moreover, yet it goes into some very dark territory. Some of the elements of the book are obvious red herrings, and other things in the book lead the reader to struggle with what is going on. There are legitimate times when my sanity was questioned, and I went back to re-read some passages sheerly out of curiosity.

For me, that was what I enjoyed the most about this book. It broke conventions for my reading habit in a way that I found fun, and not annoying. I usually dislike having to go back and re-read anything, but not with this book. I not only wanted to do it, I gleefully went back to passages to re-read them just to get the breadth of what had happened. This is the book equivalent to eating bonbons and a carton of Ben and Jerry's, in that everything that is consumed is delicious and delectable, but you deep down know it's wrong.

However, I want to talk about one specific thing that made this book so decided in its writing, and that is the rich character development. Every character and every aspect of that character is written with precision. Every character is unique, and though some things the characters give hints to are apparent from the get-go, you will have no idea what is going on until the very last page. It's beautiful. I consider this element to be the most positive about the book.

Amy did a fantastic job. The mother is a garbage human, the father is a garbage human, and yet I am siding on the side of the most significant garbage human of all. I'm cheering for them.

Truby sometimes talks about antagonists having to be just as good as the protagonist. I think Amy did that here. The real antagonist of this story is so devious and terrible, and it makes the best of the protagonist that much more appealing. Moreover, yet, it's the shadow that is the brighter star.

Score

I'm in love with this book. I am probably going to read this several times, and I think Amy deserves this 96/100.

With October coming up, if you want a little mystery with your pumpkin spice latte, let me recommend "Delusions" by Amy Crandall.