The Girl in the Park by Mariah Fredericks

The Girl in the Park
Author:  Mariah Fredericks
Publisher:  Random House Children's Books
Publication date: April 24th 2012

From Goodreads:

When Wendy Geller's body is found in Central Park after the night of a rager, newspaper headlines scream, "Death in the Park:  Party Girl Found Strangled."  But shy Rain, once Wendy's best friend,knows there was more to Wendy than just "party girl."  As she struggles to separate the friend she knew from the tangle of gossip and headlines, Rain becomes determined to discover truth about the murder.




-------------------------


Really late last night I decided to start The Girl in the Park, just a couple of chapters. Yeah, that didn't happen,  I ended up reading the whole darn thing, luckily it was short read. I threw myself on the bed around 5 in the morning. HA! Sometimes it sucks being a fangirl of books.

The Girl in the Park is a YA mystery, a darn good mystery that left me guessing till close to the end.  So, I thought the mystery was quite good.  It was my favorite part of the book.  I kept reading to find out who killed  Wendy. The murder/case of Wendy reminded in some ways of the real murder of Jennifer Levin. While I was reading it I kept thinking of the "Preppy Murder Case".  I saw an American Justice show about this case a while back and while reading this book I could see some similarities.  A couple of times I thought I figured it out, but then Ms. Fredericks would take it somewhere else.

There are a couple of aspects I didn't enjoy in The Girl in the Park.  For one, Ms. Fredericks lost me a couple of times in the beginning.   Our main protagonist Rain finds out that Wendy didn't make it home last night, then she goes on with her planned day of visiting her grandma.  During these couple of pages the writing is disjointed.  One minute she is with her grandma, the next we are reading flashbacks of Rain and Wendy together.  I had to keep stopping to reread to see where we leave Rain at her grandma's and jump into the past.  It didn't last long, but for some reason my momentum never picked up.  Nothing felt smooth for the rest of the book, like I couldn't recover.  I guess maybe I kept thinking it was still going on and kept looking for it.  I don't know how to explain it, so I will just say the beginning effed up the flow of the rest for me.  My other complaint are the characters, I never felt connected to the what was happening.   I was not invested in any characters.  You know like when your friends are telling you a story about someone you don't know and you are mildly interested because it's a good story but since you don't know them, you are kinda like whatever.  <--That analogy sucks but hopefully you get what i'm saying.

I won't be screaming off the rooftops to buy The Girl in the Park, but if you love a good mystery, you certainly won't be disappointed.

Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars