Book Review: The Reappearance of Rachel Price
#CYBILS2024 Young Adult Fiction submission
THE REAPPEARANE OF RACHEL PRICE
by Holly Jackson
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 2024
A new true-crime fueled mystery thriller about a girl determined to uncover the shocking truth about her missing mother while filming a documentary on the unsolved case. Lights. Camera. Lies.1
audience: young adult
tags: contemporary, fiction, mystery, suspense, thriller
Hannah Nguyen (Judge)
This book is a slow-burning thriller with a great payoff. The story is dark and twisty and shines a light on the exploitative nature of true crime documentaries. Readers get to see what it's like to have your family dissected by the public for their proximity to a notorious unsolved mystery. This book kept me at the edge of my seat!
Read Hannah’s full review at Goodreads
Gina Adams (Judge)
3.5 stars I think. At first I was kind of impressed because I don't feel like we get many characters who are a little... nothing. Like every character has something going on for them and like not all PEOPLE do. I don't always feel like I have a wide emotional range on a daily basis so it was nice to feel a little represented. I like a unique writing style but I also like RANGE and I just don't feel like I felt it.
Read Gina’s full review at Goodreads
Sondra Eklund (Category Chair, YA Speculative Fiction)
I knew to expect a thriller where you couldn't count on police to do the right thing and there's going to be scary danger by the end. To me, this book dragged a bit in the middle. However, as usual with a Holly Jackson book, by the time we started finding out what actually happened, it didn't drag a bit. In fact, I turned on the audiobook as I was working on a jigsaw puzzle and when the audiobook finished, it was fully two hours later than I'd thought it was.
Holly Jackson doesn't go for realism, but she does go for pulled from outrageous headlines, and she did surprise but satisfy me with the outcome of this twisty thriller.
Read Sondra’s full review on her blog, Sonderbooks.
Cover image, blurb, and tags sourced to Goodreads.com