Made me SUPER HOMESICK, thanks Jenny Torres Sanchez. ( )

This is your typical girl has crush on boy and only talks to him in short periods of three sentences. Then one fateful night he approaches girl at a club and they hang out and have the best night of girl's night only to wake up to find out he killed himself. Or maybe this isn't so typical after all.

Frenchie Garcia secretly liked Andy Cooper for years. When he died it was like she lost something. Her friendship with her best friend Joel is strained, though she partially blames it on his new girlfriend. So she sets out to recreate that last night and find that something she lost.

All I can say is that this book was too short. I have an e-book and I see it's only about 150 pages long. There wasn't much time for anything. There wasn't much of a plot or a life-changing goal Frenchie set out for herself, in fact, she seemed about just as lost in the end than she was in the beginning. I liked our main character very much but she is not a likable person so I can see someone else reading this being put off by her vicious nature. There's not much to say about her one night with Andy and later Colin that makes it a thrilling read. Sure there's a romance but it's so boring the way it comes about.

There's not much to say about this book. ( )

RGG: Well-written, compelling story of a high school senior's questioning of herself and life after a school friend's suicide. Never maudlin, but satisfyingly intensely realistic. References to Emily Dickinson and her poems is sophisticated and not gimmiky. Several risky behaviors--smoking, drinking, pills, and teen suicide. Audience: YA+.

Frenchie Garcia is struggling.

She's just finished high school, and nothing is going as planned. She didn't get into art school. Her best friend constantly blows her off to be with his new girlfriend. Their plans to move to Chicago have imploded. And the cherry on top of this disastrous year? The guy she's had a crush on for as long as she can remember committed suicide after spending the night adventuring with her.

She's withdrawn, depressed, antisocial. Her friends don't understand what her problem is, but then again, they don't know what happened with Andy. Frenchie pushes everyone away with her snippy, snarky attitude. And here lies my biggest problem with this book: instead of reaching out for help, Frenchie pushes her friends away with well-timed, sometimes vicious jabs. And it didn't feel necessary to me.

You know, sometimes when you're reading about a character like Frenchie, you understand that they need to act out. You feel bad for them. You forgive their indiscretions. But that was really hard with Frenchie, because more than feeling her pain, I just felt like she was trying too hard to be edgy and mysterious.

I didn't feel much better about her friends. Joel keeps secrets from Frenchie. He tosses his long time best friend aside for his new girlfriend. Her other friends aren't much better, insisting that she drown her sorrows in the bar's cute bouncer, Colin, without even asking her what's wrong. (Not that she probably would have answered truthfully.)

Strangely, the only character I felt a semblance of connection with was Colin -- the one character who doesn't back away from the barbed wire fence that Frenchie has constructed around herself.

As for the topic of suicide, I felt that it could have been dealt with a lot better. I remember reading 13 Reasons Why while I was working a college job and struggling to hold in the tears as students and their parents swirled around me. That is a book that properly deals with suicide. It's more of a plot point here than anything else. "This guy died; how is Frenchie going to handle it?"

I can't fault the writing style, but I had trouble getting into the book, and most of the characters fell flat for me. Honestly, I'm really disappointed, because this book has been on my list since it came out and I didn't win a free copy. This book could have been so much better than it was. ( )

Seventeen-year-old Frenchie is obsessed with death. She lives near a cemetery, so constantly sees funeral processions. Every time one goes by she wonders how they died, what they look like in their casket, what happens when they’re buried, and other morbid thoughts.

Read the rest on my blog: http://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/death-dickinson-and-the-demen... ( )