Ravishing Rosebush

Rosebush by Michele Jaffe

*I received this book via Different Area Codes tours

This book gets a resplendent 4 out of 5 gnomes for being full of drama, mystery and some seriously messed up characters.  The cover of the book tells you a lot of what you can expect I especially love the line that was added to her arm, it really adds to the mysteriousness of it all.  Jane is pretty much the ultimate mean girl she changes her entire identity just to fit in and be popular.  


The book opens with Jane waking up in the hospital after being hit by a car and found in a rosebush.  Then the story backs up to show what happened up to that point and after.  Jane used to be an unpopular girl but had enough and changed everything about herself to fit in.  She becomes best friends with Kate and Langley the two most popular people at her school.  Being friends with them means that she's automatically in the popular crowd.


Jane makes some horrible choices even though she has her own reasons for making them.  She sees her mother as uncaring.  She is one of these characters that you just want to have a serious talk with about her boyfriend, he has abuser written all over him.  He's a character that has well, no redeeming qualities.  The guy tries to control everything that Jane does and makes everything bad happen seem like her fault.  


It seems that everyone has a secret to hide and that makes them seem even more like suspects.  Well almost everyone is a suspect except for my favorite character her sister Annie, who has a barbie doll that she thinks is a man trapped in a woman's body.  All the clues come together and the answer to the mystery surprised me.  


The beauty in this book is that Jane is slowly being driven mad but at the same time discovering important information about people she thought she knew.  Jane seems to learn more about herself in the hospital room then she ever did among the popular crowd.  This is a truly engrossing mystery with a flawed but beginning to change narrator.  I would highly recommend this book for anyone that likes a mystery along with a lot of high school angst.