Book Review: The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon by Sara Beitia

Title: The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon

Author: Sara Beitia

# Of Pages: 312

Publisher: Flux

Publication Date: October 8, 2010

Level: Young Adult

Rating: 3 Hearts

Synopsis

(From Amazon.com)

"We have to get to her first…"

Abducted? Runaway? Murder victim? Lily Odilon—local wild child from a middle-of-nowhere town—has vanished after spending the night with her boyfriend, new kid Albert Morales. Suspected in her disappearance, Albert sets out with Lily’s prickly younger sister, Olivia, to discover what really happened to Lily—and to keep the promise he made to her late one night.

My Verdict

This book was a mix of good and bad. The plot was good, and the author did a good job of creating a well paced and suspenseful read. However, the characters weren’t all that likable and the story’s format was confusing to say the least.

The book wastes no time jumping right into the action and kept up a good pace throughout. While a lot of the time I could see what was coming even though Albert was absolutely clueless, there was still a sense of suspense for the overall plot that kept me intrigued, kept me reading.

The book was written in a mix of chapters from the past and present. I was confused at the beginning because I saw no noticeable signal for the switch. I later noticed that the chapters from the present were marked with a time stamp under the chapter number. However it soon became even more confusing because the chapters from the past started jumping around a lot from what happened to Albert after Lily’s disappearance to the time they first met, then to Albert’s life after, then back to their first date. There were also some chapters in a different font than the rest but I have yet to figure out what that was all about.

I really didn’t feel any connection with the main couple, Lily and Albert.

You really only get to know Lily first-hand for a few chapters, after that the only way you learn about her is through Albert’s memories, so she felt like a stranger to me. I felt bad for her and the situation she was in, but I didn’t really like her as a character.

With Albert, who is the main narrator of the story, it wasn’t that I didn’t know him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I disliked him so much. I think it might have just been because he makes a lot of stupid decisions over the course of the book and by the middle of it I was so fed up I just wanted to shake some sense into him!