Tuesday, January 24, 2017

This Adventure Ends

Cover image for This adventure ends
This Adventure Ends
by Emma Mills
Henry Holt and Co, 2016, 308 pages, Young Adult Fiction

Sloane isn't expecting to fall in with a group of friends when she moves from New York to Florida--especially not a group of friends so intense, so layered with private tragedies and secret codes, and so all-consuming. Yet that's exactly what happens. Sloane becomes closest to Vera, a social-media star who lights up any room, and Gabe, Vera's twin brother and the most serious person Sloane has ever met. When a beloved painting by the twins' late mother goes missing, Sloane takes on the responsibility of tracking it down, a journey that crosses state lines--and pulls her ever deeper into the twins' lives.

Emma Mills’ first book, First and Then, is a modern take on Jane Austen that was widely praised. In her sophomore novel, Mills keeps the light, witty banter Jane Austen is known for. This made the book a nice palette cleanser since I’d been reading a lot of books about people with capital I issues. I appreciated that This Adventure Ends was fun and quirky and light, but all of the characters dealt with real issues, too. Also, this book asks the important question: What if Nicholas Sparks got writer’s block and ended up finding his way back by writing Vampire Academy fanfiction? How could you not like a book like that?

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