REVIEW Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

Unraveling
by Elizabeth Norris
Hardcover
Balzer + Bray
April 24, 2012

Two days before the start of her junior year, seventeen-year-old Janelle Tenner is hit by a pickup truck and killed—as in blinding light, scenes of her life flashing before her, and then nothing. Except the next thing she knows, she’s opening her eyes to find Ben Michaels, a loner from her high school whom Janelle has never talked to, leaning over her. And even though it isn’t possible, Janelle knows—with every fiber of her being—that Ben has somehow brought her back to life.

But her reincarnation, and Ben’s possible role in it, is only the first of the puzzles that Janelle must solve. While snooping in her FBI-agent father’s files for clues about her accident, she uncovers a clock that seems to be counting down to something—but to what? And when someone close to Janelle is killed, she can no longer deny what’s right in front of her: Everything that’s happened—the accident, the murder, the countdown clock, Ben’s sudden appearance in her life—points to the end of life as she knows it. And as the clock ticks down, she realizes that if she wants to put a stop to the end of the world, she’s going to need to uncover Ben’s secrets—and keep from falling in love with him in the process.

From debut author Elizabeth Norris comes this shattering novel of one girl’s fight to save herself, her world, and the one boy she never saw coming.

Okay, one of the absolute best parts of this book was that I had no idea what was coming.  I was seriously completely surprised.  And that's what I loved about it so I'm going to try to make this review as spoiler-free as I can make it.

I LOOOOVED this book.  I loved how mysterious it was.  I loved how you only got little bits of the puzzle.  No info-dump here, just learning what was going on as Janelle did.

I loved her.  She was tough but still very much a normal teenage girl.  She stresses out about her family.  She worries about her best friend.  She has issues with her ex-best-friend who did the unforgivable.  She's doing the best she can with very little support system.  She had worries and fears and was not perfect.  Except in Ben's eyes.  All her life she's barely noticed him (he's one of the stoner kids that sit in the back of the class) but after he brings her back to life she's understandably obsessed with figuring out just who he is.

And Ben is awesome.  He is absolutely smitten with Janelle and has been for as long as he's known her.  It's adorable.  And it annoys his friends who are sick of hearing about it (for years), which is at times hilarious.

I got so absorbed in the back and forth between the two of them that I managed to forget a vital piece of information from the back of the book..."to put a stop to the end of the world". Oh yeah.  The world REALLY IS going to end if they can't figure out what's going on and stop it.  And the world-ending thing?  Totally not what I was expecting.

LOVED it.

There's a bunch of unexpected sci-fi elements in this book, which was a HUGE plus for me, but if you hate sci-fi, this isn't the book for you.  Just warning you since it really doesn't go into detail on the blurb.

Hope you love it as much as I did!

-geekgirl