Book review – Rosebush by Michele Jaffe

Jane is found, near death, in a rosebush – a victim of hit and run.
But as she’s convalescing she realizes that her friends’ stories and her memories of what happened that night aren’t adding up.

And now the only thing she does know is that one of her friends isn’t so friendly.

One of them was trying to kill her.

One of them still is.

Sometimes the truth is a very thorny thing. . .

Rosebush is something a little bit different for me; it’s a psychological thriller – a genre that I wouldn’t normally be particularly drawn to but I liked the premise (someone is trying to kill one of the most popular girls in school) and I like to try something different every now and again so I thought I’d give it a go. I’m so glad I did! Rosebush is a gripping mystery and thriller. The list of possible suspects seem to be endless; the twists constantly surprising and the ‘love to hate’ characters really well written.

The story is narrated by main character Jane. Given that Jane spends most of the book confined to hospital, recovering from her injuries, there is a surprising amount of action.  Some of the drama takes place in the hospital itself but a lot of the mystery and detail of the plot are provided by Jane as she flashes back to the party she attended the night she was hit by the car and to events earlier in her life. A complex picture builds up of Jane and the supporting characters and the ‘whodunnit’ surrounding the hit and run isn’t the only mystery running through the book. As Jane recounts events and begins to remember more detail of the night she was almost killed, the reader is drip-fed scintillating facts that had me jumping to all sorts of conclusions about who the enemy might really be.

Rosebush has a large and well drawn cast of  supporting characters, many of whom seem to have reason to take issue with Jane. This is high school drama taken to the extreme in a 90210 meets Mean Girls with a touch of Heathers kind of way. Jane is a very interesting character; desperate to be popular and very capable of shallowness to go with it. At times I found myself not liking her attitude or behaviour very much at all but at the same time I had a lot of sympathy for her situation, particularly when it seemed that no-one was taking her fears seriously.

Told over a five day period following the hit and run, the story is fast paced and I found Rosebush to be a quick read which was partly due to the fact that I was so gripped that I couldn’t put it down! There was just the right amount of creepiness to keep me reading but not to be so scary as to put me off. I love the fact that I didn’t guess the ending – in fact, the book is so well written that at one point I was actually wondering if there was anyone trying to kill Jane or if she was imagining it all as a severe reaction to her accident. I’m not going to spoil the ending for anyone – you’ll just have to read it to find out but I will say that the outcome wasn’t what I was expecting and I love that this book kept me on the wrong foot throughout.

4/5

You can find out more about Michele Jaffe and her books at: http://www.michelejaffe.com/

You can also read an extract from the book on the UK publisher website at: http://www.atombooks.net/rosebush-extract/