Book Review: All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab

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Author	Anna Jarzab
Title	All Unquiet Things
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Date of Publication	January 12, 2010
Page Count	337
ISBN	978-0-385-73835-4

Neily was shocked when his ex-girlfriend Carly was found murdered, but when Carly's cousin Audrey wants him to help her find the real murderer. The imperative being "real", as Audrey doesn't believe her father killed her best friend, even though he was convicted. Neily reluctantly joins Audrey in her investigation at Brighton, the school they all attended together, in part because even after a year he still feels guilty for not answering his phone when Carly called the night she was murdered.

Anna Jarzab did a wonderful job with this shocking and heart-breaking mystery, exploring love, loss, family and friendship in just 337 pages. With her wonderful, deep writing and a plot that turned in circles (in a very good way) she created something fresh without the happily-ever-after, the-world-is-perfect ending so many other authors would have used. The story is told in alternating points of view, changing back and forth between Neily and Audrey.

Carly is by no means a sympathetic character at the time of her murder, but her backstory gives a hint of what made her the person she was in the end. Audrey was always a rougher version of the "old Carly", I felt. She had been though a lot in the years before she came to Empire Valley. What made them bond, yet feel different at the same time was that both girls lost their mothers, but while Carly's mom died of cancer, Audrey's mom left her and her Dad to live a different life. Neily is the son of a wealthy IT guy and a nurse who got a divorce. With Carly, his world seemed okay, but once she dumped him for a rich bully and publicly humiliated him, his world took yet another turn for the worse. And this is only a very short rundown of the characters Jarzab created.

I absoltely loved the book and was glad I decided to buy it with all the books already on Mt. TBR. It has been a while since I read such a well-written book by a debut author and I will be holding my breath for the next book written by Anna Jarzab.

Oh yes, and a sentence I wrote down? "How many people are we going to lose before the universe decides we've had enough?" Carly asked me.