REVIEW for If I Tell

Thank you Kay at Sourcebooks.

TITLE:               If I Tell

AUTHOR:         Janet Gurtler

GENRE:            YA Contemporary

RATING:          3 Stars

I loved I'm Not her and I have to say that I find this author wonderful. Having said this, I will say that I did enjoy reading If I Tell, especially since this was my savior as I wanted, in a local clinic, for over 7 hours to have my foot x-rayed after a fall (yep, it is broken!).

I immediately fell in love with the storyline - Jaz and Lindsey having a close, but very odd relationship which reminded just how fragile friendships can be, especially as you grow into adulthood and find that what you thought was great as a child is just not that great anymore. This book does a great job of showing how people can grow in diffeent directions, while struggling to stay together.

So, from that point of view the author had me hooked completely. What did not work as well for me was the other storyline - where Jaz finds out that the man who will be marrying her (somewhat odd) mother might have done something awful and it involves Lindsey.

The writing is wonderful and the plot moves forward at a great pace (always a huge plus for me). But I kept feeling so frustrated with this book and with the Jaz character who finds hersef having to make a decision. This is all fine and dandy but throughout the entire storyline, all I wanted to scream was "tell someone -tell Simon and get to the bottom of the truth". Instead, we see Jaz shrinking away of everybody and becoming a bit of a nut case herself.

I would have liked to see this storyline written with more adult decisions and a lot more willingness to communicate and talk it through.

I loved the book, but felt a little too frustrated to give it a 4 star rating.