Author: Kate Hendrick
Genre: Young Adult/
Publisher: Text Publishing
Publication Date: 26th June 2013
ISBN: 9781921922855
Stand alone or series: Stand Alone
Pages: 272 pages
Book Received from: Text Publishing
First Lines: Phones ringing, the constant chug of photocopiers, the whirr of the fans. People talking, walking, typing... After the months at home I'd forgotten how busy the world can be.
Synopsis:
A rainy night.
A car crash.
After the accident Sarah moves to a new school. A new place where no one knows what happened to her or her brother—where she doesn't have to deal with the history that's pulling the rest of her family apart.
Will is keeping his head down at home, just trying to get by. Then his sister Lauren comes back—as caustic as always but somehow changed. Will doesn't know what upheaval brought her home. But it's sparking some serious change in his life too.
Eliat's got no mother of her own, and she's way too young to be one. Looking after a two-year-old, trying to finish school—sometimes all that keeps her sane is partying as hard and fast as she can. Now the pressure's building and Eliat just wants to get away.
Just get into a car and drive.
In this impressive and beautifully written debut, Kate Hendrick sets the butterfly effect in motion. The moving stories of three teenagers going through crucial changes—before, after and around the accident—show how random actions acquire significance. How one pivotal moment could transform your life and you might never know; how what you do matters.
My Thoughts:
I'm not sure whether it was just me but the beginning of The Accident was hard to get into. You have three different characters; Sarah whose POV is told a while after the accident aka "Later.", Will whos POV is told after the accident, and Eliat who's POV is told before the accident.
My biggest thing was getting confused with who was who. For me there didn't seem to be a distinct voice for each of these characters but there was something about their stories that spurred me on to keep going. I kept having to flick back to the beginning of the chapter to see which "POV" time it was before what I was reading clicked a little more. Once I got to about halfway, things got easier. Again this could just be me, and others may not find this problem.
I think my favourite character had to be Sarah. I really enjoyed her POV especially when she encounters a tape that her brother had made. Just reading about her watching it over and over had me feeling quite sad along with her.
Eliat's wake up call couldn't come soon enough. From someone who has had a kid, I found it really hard with some of the things that Eliat did. Her nonchalance towards Tash simply grated on my nerves at times. It wasn't all the time throughout the story but it was enough for me to want to reach in and go "You've had this child, grow up, step up and take charge." My little rant done lol.
Overall, while I found the beginning of the novel confusing, I was quite happy with how the story tied together at the end. I'm glad I stuck with this.
