Damage Done by Amanda Panitch

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Publication date: 2015
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 292
My rating: 3 stars
Ages: 18+

Julia Vann watched her best friend, boyfriend, and brother die. Now nearly a year later, she's Lucy Black. With a new name, new life, and new best friend, Lucy hopes that those events are all behind her. But someone from her past keeps appearing where he isn't supposed to be and Lucy is scared of what that means. She has to decide how far she will go to keep the past from ruining her present.

This is one of those books that is supposed to have very shocking twist at the end. Unfortunately, I had it basically figured out almost before I started reading it. There was an author quote on the back cover copy that I kind of felt like gave it away by comparing Panitch to another author. There was another, smaller twist within the shocking twist that I didn't figure out until I was 3/4 of the way through the book, so there's that.

The writing was intriguing though. Even though I had kind of figured out the twist, the way that the narrator was written was interesting as I started to pick up on all the clues throughout the book. The way Julia reacted to things and referred to other things; the journal entries by the psychologist--they all added up to an inside look of a terrifying kind of person.

This is also one of those books that left me feeling sort of heavy, melancholy, and disgusted after reading it. That's not usually the type of feeling I want to have after reading a book.

There was some swearing and sexual themes that caused me to put the age higher than I would have had they not been in the book.

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