Frozen Beauty Blog Tour: Review + Giveaway

Frozen Beauty
Author: Lexa Hillyer 
Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller/Contemporary
Release Date: March 17, 2020
Publisher: HarperTeen

Synopsis:

Everyone in Devil’s Lake knows the three golden Malloy sisters—but one of them is keeping a secret that will turn their little world inside out….

No one knows exactly what happened to Kit in the woods that night—all they have are a constellation of facts: icy blue lips and fingers cold to the touch, a lacy bra, an abandoned pick-up truck with keys still in the ignition. Still, Tessa, even in her fog of grief, is certain that her sister’s killer wasn’t Boyd, the boy next door whom they’ve all loved in their own way. There are too many details that don’t add up, too many secrets still tucked away.

But no matter how fiercely she searches for answers, at the core of that complicated night is a truth that’s heartbreakingly simple.

Told in lush, haunting prose, Frozen Beauty is a story of the intoxicating power of first love, the deep bonds of sisterhood, and a shocking death that will forever change the living.

I was excited to read Frozen Beauty as soon as I saw the description. It's one of my favorite genres and the plot sounded really interesting. It turned out not to be quite what I was hoping for or expecting, but was solidly written with a twisty story line and complex characters. I can't say much more about the plot outside of the description because I don't want to accidentally give anything away. Although the story is a mystery - what really happened the night Kit died - it turned out to be pretty predictable (for me, at least). I read tons of thrillers and obviously try to figure everything out before the narrator. It honestly takes something fresh and original to stump me anymore, which doesn't happen very often. I figured out the majority of the mystery about halfway through and the rest of the pieces fell into place quickly after that. 

I thought the characters were well written and complex. They had distinct personalities with good traits and flaws which made them feel very realistic. Even the secondary characters were realistic and I enjoyed getting to know each of them and their role in the story. The other thing that stood out to me was the writing style. The book is written in two separate time periods - "before" and "now," and is also told from alternating perspectives - that of Tessa and Lilly. The "before" is done mostly as entries from Lilly's diary, while the "now" is told from Tessa's perspective. I almost always prefer the first person point of view when reading a book, and this was not done in that way. The author wrote the story in the third person POV along with the diary entries. Although this was well done and other readers won't have any problem with it, it bugged me personally. Please remember this is just my honest opinion and doesn't reflect on the story or writing itself. I truly believe that if it had been written in the first person, I would've been able to connect with the characters on a deeper level, which would have led to me slipping inside the story alongside them instead of feeling like I'm just reading about it. That's what I personally love about the first person POV - the deeper connection with the narrator and the ability for me to slip inside the story and feel like I'm experiencing everything alongside them.

Overall, this was a well written YA mystery/thriller with complex characters, lots of red herrings, and tons of twists and turns that will keep the reader guessing until the very end. I definitely recommend it for fans of the genre.

  

Lexa Hillyer is the Founder and President of Publishing at Glasstown Entertainment, an all-womxn creative development and production company located in New York and Los Angeles. She is also the author of Frozen Beauty, Spindle Fire, Winter Glass, and Proof of Forever, all young adult novels published by HarperCollins, as well as the poetry collection Acquainted with the Cold from Bona Fide Books. Acquainted with the Cold was the 2012 gold prize winner of the Foreword Book of the Year Award for Poetry and received the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals and collections including Best New Poets 2012, and she has received several honors for poetry. Lexa earned her BA in English from Vassar College and her MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She worked as an editor at both HarperCollins and Penguin, before founding Glasstown Entertainment along with New York Times Bestselling author Lauren Oliver. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter and their very skinny orange tree.

Win a signed hardcopy of FROZEN BEAUTY by Lexa Hillyer (US Only)

Starts: March 17, 2020

Ends: March 31, 2020

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