Choker - A Review

Choker - Elizabeth Woods (Simon & Schuster Egalley)

Product Details

• Pub. Date: January 2011
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
• Format: Hardcover , 240pp
• Age Range: Young Adult

• ISBN-13: 9781442412330
• ISBN: 144241233X

Synopsis (publisher's website)

Zoe and Cara were as close as friends could be—until Zoe moved away. Miserable without Zoe, Cara grew into an unhappy sixteen-year-old, tormented by the popular girls and nursing a hopeless crush. Then one day Cara returns home from a miserable day at school to find Zoe sitting on her bed. Shocked and delighted, Cara agrees to hide Zoe from troubles at home and the two resume their friendship as though no time has passed. Zoe even helps Cara get up the courage to stand up for herself and talk to her crush. But when one of the popular girls winds up dead, Cara begins to suspect that Zoe is responsible, and her questions only feed Zoe’s anger. As Cara searches for answers, she is forced to confront a deadly truth….

My Thoughts:

If you want a book that will keep you reading, this is the one. It only took a few pages to draw me completely into this story. Elizabeth worked some great magic with this book. Always keeping the reader just on the edge of the truth. I spent the majority of the book trying to decide which way the story was going to go.

Cara struck me as a lonely person and Zoe instantly struck me as unbalanced. Truth be told Zoe creeped me out from the get go. Something instantly seemed off about her. I loved seeing Cara start to come out of her shell but at the same time, it was hard to decipher what was real and what wasn't, or was it all real? That was the gem of this book. I was never 100% positive either way until the end of the book. I loved that!

This really is a book about Cara. The other characters all had their parts and they played them well. Ethan was a great character, everything a high school crush should be. Here parents baffled me a bit but we got to see them through Cara's eyes and I think we saw how Cara either saw or believed them to be . But in the end, this book is all about Cara and Zoe.

In the end, I loved this book. I love a good mystery, and there was mystery to be had. I loved that I found it slightly disturbing, and it had some definitely disturbing scenarios. Most of all I loved that I was kept in suspense, never quite knowing if I was on solid ground or not. I most certainly recommend this book.