Review: The Half Life Of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno

Book Title: The Half Life Of Molly Pierce

Author: Katrina Leno

Publish Date: July 8th, 2014

Publisher: HarperTeen

Genre: YA/Contemporary

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Pre-Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depsitory

Synopsis from Goodreads:

You take it for granted. Waking up. Going to school, talking to your friends. Watching a show on television or reading a book or going out to lunch.

You take for granted going to sleep at night, getting up the next day, and remembering everything that happened to you before you closed your eyes.

You live and you remember.

Me, I live and I forget.

But now—now I am remembering. 

For all of her seventeen years, Molly feels like she’s missed bits and pieces of her life. Now, she’s figuring out why. Now, she’s remembering her own secrets. And in doing so, Molly uncovers the separate life she seems to have led…and the love that she can’t let go.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce is a suspenseful, evocative psychological mystery about uncovering the secrets of our pasts, facing the unknowns of our futures, and accepting our whole selves.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from HarperTeen via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

I've always been fascinated by Dissociative Identity Disorder. To the point where I gobble up anything that has to do with that. Books such as Sybil, Where Rabbit Howls, The Flock & All Around The Town. I've watched movies that have to do with it, documentaries, pretty much anything I could get my hands on about this illness, I read or watched. So when I saw the blurb for this book on Goodreads, I knew I just had to have it. So I waited anxiously for it to go up on Edelweiss and finally it did. I downloaded and then just waited for the right time to read it.

I picked it up a few days ago and I was immediately hooked. Chunks of time is missing in seventeen year old Molly's life. She wakes up and doesn't know where she is or how she got there. Usually the blackouts only last a few hours but sometimes they can last for a full day. 

She's there when a boy named Lyle is in an accident and is in serious condition. She stays with him until they arrive at the hospital. She calls his brother at Lyle's request and when Sayer arrives at the hospital, Molly can't shake the feeling that she knows him somehow. Lyle's death is the catalyst for Molly to realize that something isn't right. She knows she's never met these boys before, but she can't help feeling like she knows Sayer and that she knew Lyle.

What's weirder is that she feels her parents and siblings, Clancy & Hazel know something she doesn't know. She starts to feel like maybe, they know that she's not as normal as she tries to pretend she is. Maybe they know about her blackouts and missing chunks of time even though she's tried her hardest to keep them from knowing about it.

Normally the stream of consciousness writing style would have driven me crazy, but in this particular book, it works. It flowed in a way I wouldn't expect stream of consciousness writing to flow. So that definitely made me happy. Sometimes writing style can make or break a book. Thankfully, this time it made the book better.

This book was very character driven, which I really liked. The character development was well done.I do wish we had gotten to see more of Erie & Luka though. It seemed like most of the book was focused on finding out the truth about Molly, Lyle and Sayer. I also wished we had gotten a longer ending. I liked how it ended, and it was definitely much different from any of the other books about this disorder had ever been, but I wanted something just a tad bit longer.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was a short book, but definitely a well written and fascinating book. I am going to give it 4 stars and I would definitely recommend it to others. I definitely plan on buying a finished copy of this book.