REVIEW: Shutter by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Title: Shutter

Genre: Comtemporary Mystery-ish YA

Author: Laurie Faria Stolarz

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Publication: October 18th 2016

Cover Rating: 3/5

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October is the month where I search and search for spooky books and movies to get me in the mood for Halloween. I picked Shutter up in hopes that it would be one of those books. Unfortunately, I was less than impressed.

Day is this really great teenage girl. She is always trying ways to help others or make the world a better place. But on the other hand she is also kind of hypocritical. She is mad at her parents for helping others and she gets upset if someone lies to her or omits details but she does that stuff all the time. She has her heart in the right places but her plans aren't always the greatest. Oh! Her real name is also pretty cool. Double Oh! She likes to take pictures and that is a fairly large part of the plot/story.

Julian is a sixteen year old convict. Okay, maybe not a convict, yet, but he is on the run after escaping juvie. So he is definitely not good news. Or is he? People believe he has been wrong accused of his crime. That crime being murder. And Day happens to be one of those people who think Julian got a raw deal. Which he did with his abusive father and zombie mother.

The other characters in this book just seemed pretty unneeded. They added very little to the overall plot and we're just fillers, overall. Day's parents were sort of needed because the mother was a lawyer so it played into the plot with Julian. Everything just magically fell into place. Such as when Day and Julian met. Had he met another random chick, who didn't have this need to save everyone, then his story could have ended entirely different.

Having read other books by Laurie Faria Stolarz, I can honestly say that Shutter felt mediocre in comparison. It had a decent plot and I liked the characters well enough but it just fell flat. It wasn't spooky or suspenseful and with the cover plus the title, and the fact that it came out in October, I was expecting something a little more thrilling but what I got was just a teenage girl playing detective.

The ending was sort of unexpected. I found myself siding with Day about Julian so when everything came to a close I was kind of surprised. It was very convenient that someone had ended up buying the murder weapon the same day it happened. I was so sure it was going to end differently.

So, all in all, it wasn't a bad book. It's just wasn't a great book either. 

Overall, I gave the book 3.5/5 stars.