Gardenia by Kelsey Sutton
Published February 28th 2017
Seventeen-year-old Ivy Erickson has one month, twenty-seven days, four hours, fifty-nine minutes, and two seconds to live.
Ever since she was a child, Ivy has been able to see countdown clocks over everyone’s heads indicating how long before they will die. She can’t do anything about anyone else’s, nor can she do anything about her own, which will hit the zero hour before she even graduates high school.
A life cut short is tragic, but Ivy does her best to make the most of it. She struggles emotionally with her deep love for on-again, off-again boyfriend Myers Patripski. She struggles financially, working outside of school to help her mom and her sister. And she struggles to cope with the murder of her best friend, another life she couldn’t save. Vanessa Donovan was killed in the woods, and everyone in town believes Ivy had something to do with it.
Then more girls start disappearing. Ivy tries to put her own life in order as she pieces together the truth of who ended Vanessa’s. To save lives and for her own sanity.
The clock is always ticking. And Ivy’s only hope is to expose the truth before it runs out completely.
I really liked the concept of this book (it was very similar to a book I read in 2010, Numbers by Rachel Ward) and I thought the writing was really great. The writing was actually my favorite part about Gardenia. I liked Ivy and even though I wasn’t emotionally invested in her story, I was still interested to see what was going to happen. I believe this is a standalone, so I really liked that aspect as well. I’m a big fan of standalones so if you’re looking for a good mystery but you don’t want to get caught up a long series, Gardenia would be a good one to pick up.
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