Popular Girl dies.

Then Popular Girl wakes up, in her bed, not dead, living her last day again.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

This book is definitely gripping. I won’t say it’s the best book of the year – the characters are hard to like, the story of “Popular Girl Seeing The Unintentional Damage Her Life Causes” a little too typical – but good gosh I couldn’t put it down. Lauren Oliver does a most excellent job in playing with the reader’s emotions and expectations. There is one level of the book – Samantha, stuck in a perpetual Groundhog’s Day cycle, struggling to solve the mystery of how to live this particular day in her life – and then there is another, the more interesting, theoretical level. Why is this happening to her? What will be the optimal outcome of this story? If she “wins,” does she get to live? What does it mean if she doesn’t?

And of course, there’s the visceral pleasure of ripping through the pages… the rapture of having to choose sleep over reading because you just can’t keep your eyes open.

Check this one out in March. Or you can borrow my copy.