17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

I fell absolutely in love with Nova Ren Suma's novel Imaginary Girls, which I actually bought a finished copy of after reading an advance copy of because I knew I would want to reread it in the future (and I do). Her writing was haunting and vivid, and she instantly made it on my "must read YA" list. However, her most recent novel, 17 & Gone, just didn't excite me with the premise as much so it took a little while (almost a year) to pick it up. 

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma is the story of 17 year old Lauren who begins having visions of girls, all of whom are seventeen and missing. She begins searching for clues and trying to solve what is going on, both to the girls and to herself. 

As expected, the writing in 17 & Gone is flawless. Suma has a way with description and imagery that is hard to describe except to say it is pretty much perfection. However, the characters themselves were just not as interesting and complicated as those in Imaginary Girls, and the story itself was not as enigmatic or surreal either. 

The mystery of 17 & Gone was a little too predictable and expected to me, but there is still a disquiet to the book, and combined with the vivid writing, made it something I still really enjoyed. However, I would easily still recommend Imaginary Girls instead when referring to Nova Ren Suma, but if you are craving a little more from her you may want to give 17 & Gone a shot. I am definitely not deterred from picking up future books by Suma, with writing like that she has me completely under her spell.

Release Date: March 21st 2013  Pages: 354  Source: Personal  

Publisher:  Dutton Juvenile Buy It: Book Depository