Review: What We Saw At Night by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Via Goodreads

*I received this book from the publisher Soho Press in exchange for an honest review.

“Live once.” Some pretend like there might be a second chance. Others hide in the dark. Only Juliet knew what our life could be.

Allie Kim is 16. She has two best friends. In most ways, she’s a completely normal teenager…except that she, Rob, and Juliet can’t go out into the sun. Ever. Each suffers from Xeroderma Pigmentosum, a fatal allergy to sunlight. Their lives? Lived only at night. A bit bored, Juliet leads the trio in learning the dangerous, boundary-pushing parkour, leaping off buildings and training like Olympians until one night Allie sees what she thinks is a murder. Rob and Juliet aren’t so sure, and the division takes its toll.

At first appearance, the Soho Teen debut sounded much like a modern take on the classic Rear Window – odd circumstances lead to a possible murder sighting and disbelief. What We Saw at Night surprised me. Allie isn’t the typical YA protagonist. Neither are Rob and Juliet. Knowing the seriousness of their conditions and their odd lifestyle, it makes sense that they’d be more mature. It was refreshing, as was the relationship between the three. Allie has feelings for Rob, and so much of what she feels reminded me of those high school relationships when a friendship turned into a crush.

However, as the story progressed, the murder and ending became more and more muddled, and the suspension of disbelief was more and more difficult to achieve, and by the cliffhanger end, I was less interested in reading a sequel and more annoyed that the story had not reached some sort of conclusion.

With an intriguing premise and realistic characters, What We Saw at Night is a promising start to Soho’s Teen line, and even with the ambiguous ending, I can see this one flying off the shelves.

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