Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

Title: Girl in Snow
Author: Danya Kukafka

Read by: Kirby Heyborne, Jacques Roy, and Candace Thaxton

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 9 hour and 13 minutes
Source: Simon & Schuster Audio Digital Review Copy – Thank-you!

High school “it” girl Lucinda is found with a broken neck next to the elementary school carousel in a small town in Colorado.  Who would have murdered Lucinda and why?  This story is told through the perspectives of three very different people.  But like all small towns, their story arcs are connected in more ways than they could have imagined.

Cameron Whitley is very socially awkward.  A quiet soul who loves art, he also loves to play “statue nights” and walk around the neighborhood hiding as a “statue” and watching families through their windows, in particular, he loves to watch the beautiful Lucinda. Was he Lucinda’s stalker or a misunderstood youth?  Cameron’s father was a cop who went bad and left town years ago, but the town has not forgotten.

Russ Fletcher is a cop and former partner of Cameron’s father.  He is investigating the death of Lucinda and finds himself entrenched in the story with his brother-in-law Ivan, the school night time janitor a suspect, as well as his former partner’s son, whom he promised to protect.  Will he be able to find the true killer as well as the truth about himself?

Jade Dixon-Burns was once Lucinda’s friend, but now considers herself her enemy.  Lucinda not only stole her baby sitting job, but also the boy she loved.  With backyards that abut, Jade has noticed happenings around Lucinda that play into the greater narrative.  Is Jade a killer or another misunderstood youth?

I liked the three interconnected narratives and different perspectives.  I really liked Jade’s sass and how she told things from the point of view of what she should have said and what really happened.  I loved that the audiobook had three different narrators to tell the three point of views. 

The story moved pretty slow for me and was more of a young adult novel than a true thriller.  I didn’t feel connected to Lucinda at all and didn’t care about her death as much as I should have.  There was some major plot turns later in the book that didn’t feel true with the narrative that lead up to that point.  SPOILER ALERT (Russ and Cameron’s dad and their pinky love.  What????) SPOILER END  I had listened to the audiobook of Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia earlier this year and it was a much superior book . . . I think part of my problem was I kept comparing that book to this with the similar subject, high school girl murdered in a small town.  I figured out the murderer in Girl in the Snow pretty early on in the game, although I did doubt myself a couple of times.

Overall, Girl in Snow is an interesting story of murder in a small town, with a very well written story of a teenage problems and angst.  I want Jade Dixon-Burns to have her own spin off.