Becky's View: The Shadow Girl by Jennifer Archer

The Shadow Girl by Jennifer Archer
♦publisher: HarperTeen
♦release date: April 9th, 2013
♦paperback, 336 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone
♦source: from publisher for honest review

Sometimes I forget for an hour or two that she's with me. Sometimes I convince myself that she was only a dream. Or that I'm crazy.

For as long as Lily Winston can remember, she has never been alone. Iris, a shadowy figure who mimics Lily's movements and whispers in her ear, is with her always—but invisible to the rest of the world. Iris is Lily's secret.

But when Lily's father is killed in a tragic accident, his cryptic final words suggest that he and Lily's mother have been keeping secrets of their own. Suddenly, Iris begins pushing Lily more than ever, possessing her thoughts and urging her to put together the pieces of a strange puzzle her father left behind. As she searches for answers, Lily finds herself drawn to Ty Collier, a mysterious new boy in town. Together, Lily and Ty must untangle a web of deception to discover the truth about her family, Iris . . . and Lily's own identity.

Review: This is the story of Lily and Iris.  Lily lives a fairly normal life, except for one thing---she has always had a voice in her head, a consciousness inside her apart from her own.  For the most part, she thinks nothing of it, it's all she's ever known.  They support eachother, cheer eachother; it's a second opinion, another idea.  It's Iris.

But what is Iris, really? And what is this big mysterious danger that her parents seem to think she needs protecting from? That's where the real story lies.  I enjoyed watching this intriguing plot unfold so much.  While I admit that once I hit a certain point, I got a pretty strong inkling of what was really going on, but the exact details always escaped me until I watched the secrets completely unravel into Lily's lap. 

The only thing I didn't absolutely love about this one was the love story.  Unfortunately, the triangle really plays a bigger part in the story than I think it needed to.  While they both could have been two people in her life helping her through an incredible tough time and helping her find out what really happened, as love interests both Ty and Lily's best friend, Wyatt, became petty little boys.  I couldn't get behind Ty---he is kind, but you know from the very beginning that he is just hiding way too many secrets. Even if his intentions were good, he just went about them in such a backward and shady way.  And Wyatt---loved him as Lily's friend, but once they start toward something more, he just got whiney and overprotective and surprisingly insensative toward the fact that his best friend's dad just died. They both have their good moments, but they both definitely also have their bad ones.

BUT love story aside, the concept and mystery of Lily and Iris was strong enough on it's own to really keep me enthralled with this story.  I love fact that until almost the end, you really don't know if you're reading a psychological thriller, a ghost story, a sci-fi, a paranormal---it really could have gone any direction.  It really compells you to need to hear the truth.  And when the ball finally dropped, I was completely satisfied with the direction the story took and how it ended: with Lily really making peace with the truth and using it in the best way she could.  I really enjoyed this one and recommend it!

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Purchase Shadow Girl:  Amazon  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound