Review: Far From You by Tess Sharpe

Title: Far From You
Author: Tess Sharpe
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Release date: April 8th 2014
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice.

The first time, she's fourteen, and escapes a near-fatal car accident with scars, a bum leg, and an addiction to Oxy that'll take years to kick.

The second time, she's seventeen, and it's no accident. Sophie and her best friend Mina are confronted by a masked man in the woods. Sophie survives, but Mina is not so lucky. When the cops deem Mina's murder a drug deal gone wrong, casting partial blame on Sophie, no one will believe the truth: Sophie has been clean for months, and it was Mina who led her into the woods that night for a meeting shrouded in mystery.

After a forced stint in rehab, Sophie returns home to a chilly new reality. Mina's brother won't speak to her, her parents fear she'll relapse, old friends have become enemies, and Sophie has to learn how to live without her other half. To make matters worse, no one is looking in the right places and Sophie must search for Mina's murderer on her own. But with every step, Sophie comes closer to revealing all: about herself, about Mina and about the secret they shared.

This book was a big surprise because I had the idea that it was a book about the loss of a loved one and what happens after their death, the grief , the pain, and the how you how to live without that loved one for the rest of your life and so on, and while the story it´s about some of these issues, that isn´t the main plot. Why I didn´t expect was that it was a suspense and mystery book, where the main character tries to discover who killed her best friend Mina.

Sophie is a seventeen year old girl, she almost dies 2 times in her life, and in the prologue we get to read about both times, the first time she was fourteen years old, she has a car accident and because of that she has many physical scars, one of her legs has a permanent limp, she has constant back pain and because of that intense pain she´s prescribed Oxy, but after a while she become addicted to Oxy. And several months prior the beginning of the book she was in rehab and achieved to beat her addiction. The story begins when she has been clean for 9 months 2 weeks 6 days, and 3 months after her best friend Mina´s murder.

The other time that Sophie nearly died, was the day that she and Mina went to a place out of town, and they were there because Mina had something to do there, why were they there? Mina never tells Sophie the reason, just that they have to be there, just to trusted her; and the next thing that Sophie remember is that a man wearing ski mask murder Mina and Sophie is left unconscious. And due to Sophie 's antecedents with drugs, the murder is declared as a drug exchange gone wrong. Nobody believes her that they weren´t there for drugs and that´s why the police isn´t looking for the murderer in the right place. And because some people think it was Sophie´s fault that Mina was murder, some of her friends turn their backs on her. And her parents sent her for three months to rehab (again), even though it had been months since she used drugs but no one believes in her word (and like the boy who cried wolf, after lying about her addiction for a long time, now that she tells the truth nobody believes her).

The story is told from the point of view of Sophie and happens in the now and in the before. In the now is three months after Mina´s murder and Sophie returns from rehab determined to discover what really happened that day?, who is the murderer? and why he kill her?. In the before, this part was the most frustrating at times because the timeline isn´t linear, and the time period is from her accident when she was fourteen years old until the day of Mina´s murder, but jumps over different events that occurred in that period and not chronologically.

Overall, I really liked Far from you, is a really good suspenseful and mystery book, where we are gradually trying to find out who is the murderer, but we also discover how was the friendship between Mina and Sophie, and the love that was between them. It´s a very sad, tragic, very emotional, heartbreaking and unpredictable story. I highly recommended it for those who like YA mystery murder books.

Oh and as an additional comment, I really liked the book cover and after reading the epilogue and I get the meaning of the lights, I liked it even more.