Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

A fifteen-year-old girl is dead, found lying in the snow one cold February morning, and a suburban Colorado town is turned upside down. One by one, members of the community are suspected of killing Lucinda: was it the janitor that found her, the weird boy who was stalking her, her ex-boyfriend, the list goes on… Told from the perspectives of that weird stalker, Cameron, another teenage girl, Jade, who saw Cameron outside Lucinda’s house that night and is carrying a torch for the aforementioned ex, and a middling police officer, Russ, who so happens to be the former partner of Cameron’s dad, before he committed a crime and disappeared. It’s a small town, obviously. While dead “girls” are a dime a dozen these days, in A Girl in Snow, the dead girl is more of an afterthought. We don’t really get to know her, and what we do see doesn’t leave much of an impression. Instead, it’s all about the three narrators, and, in a nutshell, how messed up they are.

Cameron is deeply affected by his dad's disappearance, and while he might have had some type of personality disorder regardless, his troubles manifest themselves in weird ways, like killing pet birds and standing outside people's houses at night. Jade is psychically and emotionally abused by her alcoholic mother, but seems to be holding it together better than anyone else, except for when it comes to her childhood best friend, Zap, who ditched her for Lucinda and popularity. Then there is Russ, who is going through the motions of life without much feeling, as he's chosen to bottle up his deepest desires. Danya Kukafka does an amazing job of exploring their pasts and current motivations, and while the final reveal was perhaps a little obvious, this didn’t bother me so much, as I was more intrigued by the strength of the writing and the characters. Some reviewers seem confused by this book, because most of the characters are teenagers but it is more maturely written and also quite lyrical. Is it YA, literature, or a thriller? Who cares! It’s truly great.