Book Title: Playlist for the Dead
Author: Michelle Falkoff
Published Date: January 27th, 2015
Publisher: HarperTeen
Genre: YA Contemporary
Standalone
Book Link: Goodreads
Synopsis from Goodreads:
A teenage boy tries to understand his best friend's suicide by listening to the playlist of songs he left behind in this smart, voice-driven debut novel.
Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand.
As he listens to song after song, Sam tries to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it's only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.
Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now, Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.
Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand.
As he listens to song after song, Sam tries to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it's only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.
Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now, Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.
Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC of this book from HarperTeen via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.
Review:
I love music, so I was excited to read this book once I realized that music played a significant part in the story. Unfortunately, even with a kick ass playlist, this book let me down in a big way.
I could tell almost immediately that this book was going to be a letdown for me, and yet I continued to read it. I kept thinking that it would get better, these characters would get more interesting, I would get more invested, but it just never happened and I finished the book feeling like I just wasted my time.
I was expecting this book to be chock full of feels, but it wasn't. I was expecting to sympathize with Sam, but I didn't. I was expecting to be blown away by the writing, and I wasn't. It hate it when that happens
Sam would have been a better character if he had been fleshed out more. I didn't care enough about him to even pay attention to him. I didn't care about Astrid, and the mystery of what happened that night and how Hayden came to kill himself was not was compelling as I was hoping it would be.
I really only finished this book because of the music. The writing style was strange and the characters were very poorly developed. I can't even recommend this book, that's how disappointed I was in it. It had so much potential and it just didn't live up to it. I am giving this book 2 stars.
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