Aspen by Rebekah Crane Review

Aspen by Rebekah Crane

“Happiness isn’t a given in life. And when you’re happy, you should hold onto it.”  

Aspen’s life changes dramatically once she’s in an accident with the most popular girl in her school, Katelyn. Aspen has to live with the guilt from the car crash, Katelyn’s ghost following her around and deal with issues regarding family and friends.

The thing I really enjoyed about the novel is how it dealt with the struggle of trauma – post traumatic stress disorder. The book did overall revolve around Aspen’s daily struggle with acceptance and how hard it is to tell the truth. The book also dealt with interesting issues like parenting, depression and change.

Although the book has some interesting subplots the overall story went nowhere – there was this entire “mystery” built over the accident and the big reveal was disappointing. The reveal was that although Aspen had been driving and texting it was actually Katelyn’s fault as she intended to commit suicide. The mystery was built by Aspen trying to find out more information on Katelyn – this was done by shopping with Katelyn’s best friend and flirting with her boyfriend. So it’s not really a surprise when we don’t actually find anything ‘personal’ about Katelyn and her reasoning behind committing suicide.

At first Aspen seems okay but then she just gets really annoying fast. All she talks about is her hair, the lack of parenting she went through and pot. The story is then her telling everyone lies and meeting Katelyn’s ghost. Also asking creepy questions and cyber stalking.

The story had potential but the start of the novel dragged on and was boring, it did pick up near the end but by then I didn’t really care. The story had gone from the accident and recovering to her relationship with Ben (Katelyn boyfriend) and how everybody at their school judged them. Also the ending was rushed and not explained well.

★★☆☆☆