Black Ice

Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Black Ice: I'm not sure of the reference here, since it doesn't appear in the story. There's a blizzard, but no real black ice, which is found on roads and is difficult to see when driving, causing many auto accidents in icy weather. Regardless, this story sure did make me cold.

This is your basic, average YA contemporary murder mystery. We start with the actual murders, setting the stage for us to wonder whether it was Colonel Mustard with the knife or Mrs. Peacock with the gun, as it were. We cut immediately from there to Brit and Korbie, two spoiled, ditzy, wealthy high school girls. They're headed out to go hiking in the Grand Teton mountains while staying at a family retreat owned by Korbie's family. Brit's been in love with Calvin, Korbie's brother, for years. After a brief relationship 8 months prior, he broke her heart and she hasn't gotten over him. He'll be there hiking with them and Brit wants to rekindle the relationship. But on the way to the cabin, Brit and Korbie run into a blizzard and have to leave their jeep to find shelter. They're taken hostage by a couple of guys who insist to be escorted down the mountain and the adventure begins.

The plot here was relatively predictable and it wasn't hard to figure out the killer. However, that happens about halfway through the story. There's a lot of action between the time the killer is established and the resolution of the story, making the predictability a bit less. It was well-paced in terms of the events happening and the action scenes were done relatively well. And once we established the killer, things got dicey and the suspense built as our heroine tried to escape the killer.

Things got problematic for me when it came to character development. Brit, the main character, wasn't stupid. She didn't have a lot of confidence but she was extremely capable, so it's not that she wasn't sympathetic. The trouble was this: Fitzpatrick used Brit's inner monologue to let us see the way she figured things out. This was interspersed within the action, which was like seeing things in slow motion. It threw the pacing off completely. If we had been shown her thought processes as the action happened rather than been shown something, then have her internal monologue think things through, then another piece of the action, etc. we wouldn't have felt as if we were dragging her along to get to the heart of the mystery. There were a lot of "come on already!" moments.

The story had great bones; the concept was good. But the execution was lacking; the method Fitzpatrick used to tell the story bogged it down. She did a relatively good job of establishing Brit as a shallow, spoiled brat who needed to grow up; it was probably more realistic than not. All the elements of taking Brit from silly and foolish to capable and strong were there. They just didn't translate well in the telling.

The other characters were (surprisingly) better developed. While I never liked best friend Korbie, I didn't see much of her. Calvin was multi-layered as were the two bad guys. But the real, honest villain was the weather. It was more threatening than anything else.

The story did have a rather convenient ending and was pretty unbelievable. That said, I liked it. It gave me a very satisfying ending without being trite or sappy.

On audio, the book is narrated by Jenna Lamia. She is fantastic and made the story better than it otherwise would have been. She's a favourite narrator of mine and Fitzpatrick was really smart to have her do this book. She was an excellent choice for the voice of Brit.

Because of the maturity of the writing and the method used to tell the story, I'd call this book very YA. For it's target audience, it's a great story. It falls far short of amazing but at least it doesn't try to be more than it is, which is an entertaining mystery. If you want a book that won't wring you out from the tension and suspense but reads like a movie on Lifetime, this is it. It's a nice way to spend an afternoon.



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