Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking those links, I will receive a small commission from the sale at no extra cost to you.
Complicit by Stephanie Keuhn Published by St. Martin's Griffin on June 24, 2014
Genres: Suspense, Young Adult Fiction
Format: Paperback (256 pages)
Source: Library
Purchase: Amazon • IndieBound
Add Book: Goodreads • Bookhype
Two years ago, fifteen-year-old Jamie Henry breathed a sigh of relief when a judge sentenced his older sister to juvenile detention for burning down their neighbor's fancy horse barn. The whole town did. Because Crazy Cate Henry used to be a nice girl. Until she did a lot of bad things. Like drinking. And stealing. And lying. Like playing weird mind games in the woods with other children. Like making sure she always got her way. Or else.
But today Cate got out. And now she's coming back for Jamie.
Because more than anything, Cate Henry needs her little brother to know the truth about their past. A truth she's kept hidden for years. A truth she's not supposed to tell.
Trust nothing and no one as you race toward the explosive conclusion of the gripping psychological thriller Complicit from Stephanie Kuehn, the William C. Morris Award--winning author of Charm & Strange.
I knew the twist before even starting Complicit. No, I wasn’t spoiled on it. Just, what else could it have been based on the description? That didn’t stop me from reading it, obviously, because I wanted to know how things got to this starting point. Jamie’s older sister has just been released from jail after setting fire to a barn, killing a bunch of horses, and severely injuring another girl. Now, she’s on her way back to town for Jamie. He knows something is up and wants answers, but he also doesn’t want to see Cate, but he has to because reasons. It’s all very repetitive with so much back-and-forth and rehashing the same events.
I just wanted to know the truth! I mean, I knew the truth, but not the why and how. Well, Complicit doesn’t really give that to us at all. By the time Jamie learns the truth, it’s all over. I understood some of how Jamie and Cate got to where they are now, but I was still left with plenty of questions. The story feels incomplete, but not in a way that keeps you wondering. More of in a way that the author was purposely trying to just be vague and edgy. However, it doesn’t work because it doesn’t make sense. Particularly that last page. There’s no way Jamie would have discarded this object, even if he couldn’t remember how he got it or why he had it. He’d been looking for something like it for the entire book, so he should have be curious rather than dismissive. It was just a big miss.
Leave a Reply