Review: Frozen

Verity is found near death at the foot of a cliff not far from Beachy Head, a notorious place for suicides. She will never recover enough to explain how or why she fell from the cliff, but the reasons seem obvious - she's just another suicide. It's very tragic of course, especially since the people who knew her best had no idea she was so desperately unhappy and are shocked as well as grieved by her fall and injuries. But it isn't unusual for friends and relatives to be shocked and suprised in such cases, and there is no reason to consider her to be anything other than just another attempted suicide, condemned to lie comatose in a hospital bed until her dying has finished. So goes the official opinion on the fall.

Harry, her oldest friend, cannot accept this verdict. In his search for the reasons for Verity's fate he revisits their lives from their first meeting through their abrupt temporary separation late in that first idyllic summer to their current close friendship. He learns that in spite of their closeness, Verity had not shared everything with him. By unravelling the secrets of the woman who had been a central part of his life from the time she moved in next door to his house the summer he was thirteen until she was found nearly dead at the foot of a cliff Harry come to face with himself and his past.

This book is a character study, not a classical whodunnit. Harry is a well-meaning but rather ineffectual and ordinary young man who needs the tragedy of a suicide to motivate him into looking beneath the surfaces of his relationships with his closest friends and relatives. By investigating Verity's jump - or fall - he learns the truth about himself in his past, in the present and through the relationships that formed both.

I think the pacing and characterization flag a little towards the end of the book when the villain's actions are revealed,but this is a minor criticism. The story is a gripping one and the characters real and believable, and will be enjoyed by both fans of psychological mystery novels and those who love a good story with interesting characters.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Cheryl - RAM

Book Review: Frozen