Where it Began by Ann Redisch Stampler

"The finish line is in sight; what's the point of blowing it?"






Sometimes the end is just the beginning.

Gabby lived under the radar until her makeover. Way under. But when she started her senior year as a blonder, better-dressed version of herself, she struck gold: Billy Nash believed she was a the flawless girl she was pretending to be. The next eight months with Billy were bliss...Until the night Gabby woke up on the ground next to the remains of his BMW without a single memory of how she got there.

And Billy's nowhere to be found.

All Gabby wants is to make everything perfect again. But getting her life back isn't difficult, it's impossible. Because nothing is the same, and Gabby's beginning to realize she's missed more than a few danger signs along the way. 

I really like this cover, (more about that here) and I pretty much always choose my books by how they look. (Yes, I do realize how bad that is. It's working for me so far!) Anyway, it was free to read on Pulse It so I gave it a try.

Despite my shameless cover-judging, this book actually turned out to have a really cool plot. (I mean, far as I know there's not too many partial amnesia by car-crash books out there.) 

So the good points of this book that you should look forward to are:

Gabby is a really good main character. This is especially good praise from me, because I tend to be really harsh on the main character. (It's not my fault—YA main character girls are just so ugh sometimes.) I really liked reading the book from her point of view—she's just a normal teen.


The writing, too, is great. I love writing styles that are unique so you can pick up a book and know who wrote it. Plus, the author is really good at making it funny even when Gabby's in a pretty serious and solemn situation.


Now, I'm not going to spoil anything, but pretty far into the book, Gabby finds out something that took me completely by surprise. I can't even remember the last time I'd read a book when I didn't at least guess at the big surprise of the book. I was totally clueless. Now I keep looking back and thinking "How did I miss that?", but it was really, really cool to be surprised like that.  

Alright, I had just a few tiny issues with this book, but these just might be me, so you'll have to decide for yourself.


For one, Gabby, the whole book through, talks about how she constantly tries to be the best girlfriend ever so she won't lose her very-popular boyfriend. And you see, when she's talking with him sometimes, how she says what she thinks he wants her to say. But other times, she'd say things that were definitely not best girlfriend in the world lines, and it still seemed like she thought she was saying the right things. I mean, when your boyfriend is giving you serious advice, does the world's best girlfriend say "whatever"?


A little thing that confused me for a small part of the book was her parent's names. The whole book through, she refers to her parents by their first names. It never explained why she did that, and  nobody else seemed to think it was strange. I just thought it was really strange-sounding. Does anyone actually do that? Maybe I just don't know anyone who does.

There's one last point which might be a possible plot flaw, but since it's tied up in the conclusion, I won't say it here. But if you read it as well, you might pick up on it.

Despite a few minor bad marks, I liked this book. Like I said before, it's a really, really interesting read, and I'd recommend it!


Read more reviews for Where it Began at:
A Good Addiction and I B Book Blogging