And Then Everything Unraveled by Jennifer Sturman

Release Date: July 1, 2010 (originally published 2009)
Publisher: Point
Pages: 256
Review Source: Library

Synopsis: (from Goodreads)
Delia Truesdale has no idea her life's about to change forever. She's too busy enjoying the California summer. Her internet tycoon mother, T.K. Truesdale, is out of town, and that means Delia can spend all her time at the beach, surfing. That is, until everything unravels.

Her mother suddenly goes missing, and everyone thinks she's dead - except Delia, who knows T.K.'s way too organized to simply disappear. But Delia's still sent to New York to live with her two aunts - a downtown bohemian and an uptown ice queen.

And in case that's not bad enough, she also has to deal with a snooty new school and trying not to fall for the wrong guy. Oh, and finding her mother.

As she delves deeper into the tangle of conspiracies and lies surrounding T.K.'s disappearance, Delia begins to suspect that the wrong guy may be the right guy...and that some secrets - especially the dangerous ones - were never meant to be unraveled.

My Thoughts:
I had heard good things about this book and its sequel, so I was really looking forward to picking them up. I think this cover is wonderful, although I don't know how much it reflects the tone of the book. However, I love that it's not white washed: the model actually looks like she's of Indian descent, as Delia is. I loved how Jennifer Sturman managed to combine a well written mystery with a more typical boy meets girl story. I would have liked the background characters, such as Gwyneth and Grey, and even Patience, to be more well rounded. I even felt like we could have gotten to know more about Quinn, besides the fact that he's cute and rich, and that his father is potentially a Very Bad Man.

Delia is a likeable character, and despite the fact that her thoughts about her mother end up having evidence behind them, I found it a little unrealistic that she would have very little emotional reaction at all to the fact that her mother is, or at the very least, might be, dead. This changes a bit throughout the book, but despite her emotional outbursts, she seemed a bit too levelheaded about it all. However, I enjoyed her narrative voice a lot. As the book leaves off on a cliff hanger, there's no real resolution to the mystery. You sort of know what's going on, but you have to wait for the next book to find out how it all works out. I have also read the 2nd book, and I will be posting a review of it soon.

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