Review: See All The Stars by Kit Frick

See All The Stars by Kit Frick
Publisher: McElderry Books
Release Date: August 14, 2018
# of Pages:
Book Format: Hardcover
Synopsis: Part love story, part thriller, We Were Liars meets Goodbye Days in this suspenseful, lyrical debut.

It’s hard to find the truth beneath the lies you tell yourself.

THEN They were four—Bex, Jenni, Ellory, Ret. Electric, headstrong young women; Ellory’s whole solar system.

NOW Ellory is alone, her once inseparable group of friends torn apart by secrets, deception, and a shocking incident that changed their lives forever.

THEN Lazy summer days. A party. A beautiful boy. Ellory met Matthias and fell into the beginning of a spectacular, bright love.

NOW Ellory returns to Pine Brook to navigate senior year after a two-month suspension and summer away—no boyfriend, no friends. No going back. Tormented by some and sought out by others, troubled by a mysterious note-writer who won’t let Ellory forget, and consumed by guilt over her not entirely innocent role in everything and everyone she’s lost, Ellory finds that even in the present, the past is everywhere.

The path forward isn’t a straight line. And moving on will mean sorting the truth from the lies—the lies Ellory has been telling herself.

Meet Kit:

Kit  Frick  is  a  novelist,  poet,  and  MacDowell  Colony  fellow Originally  from  Pittsburgh,  PA,  she  studied  creative  writing  at  Sarah  Lawrence  College
e  and  received  her  MFA  from  Syra-cuse  University.  When  she  isn’t  putting  complicated  characters  in  impossible  situations,  Kit  edits  poetry  and  literary  fiction  for  a  small  press,  edits  for  private  clients,  and  mentors  emerging  writers  through  Pitch  Wars.  Her  debut  young  adult  novel  is  See  All  the  Stars
  (Simon  &  Schuster  /  Margaret  K. McElderry  Books,  August  14,  2018), and  her  debut  full-length  poetry collection  is 
A  Small  Rising  Up in the  Lungs
  (New  American  Press,  fall  2018).
 

MY REVIEW: 

See All The Stars by Kit Frick follows a group of friends who never thought they would be seperated. The four of them are held together by one person acting as glue, but do they see that? Do they see that all it would take is one falling out to send them off in separate directions forever? Not until it's too late…

The novel is categorized under young adult and displays many of the themes expected in that genre. Young group of friends who think they are inseparable until some major falling out happens that drives them all apart. The difference here is that Frick doesn’t just tell the story in chronological order, like every other novel, she goes back and forth between what she calls THEN and NOW.

The THEN details what the group of friends were like in the beginning; how they came together, how they functioned, what made them tick and really just their entire friendship as a whole while the NOW made up the aftermath of the falling out. The group was made up of four girls, main character Ellory, head of the pose Ret followed up by Bex and Jenni. Each of these girls were very different from the next. Ellory is quiet and very much keeps to herself. When she isn’t with her friends she spends most of her time working on her artwork in the schools art dungeon. Ret is the glue, she met and befriended each of the girls pulling them into the circle. She makes their friendship run smoothly. Everything they do is with her approval or with her in mind, she is the leader. Bex and Jenni are always in the background either jealous of the relationship between Ellory and Ret or just rolling with it in hopes for a good time.

Things start to go south when Ellory meets a boy. She is supposed to be sticking by Ret’s side but she wanders off bumping into the infamous Matthias, who she has admired since Freshman year. The two hit if off and the two are the next IT couple. Ret doesn’t like this, she calls the shots and she definitely isn’t okay with “her” Ellory being occupied by someone else, especially a boyfriend. Soon enough Ret turned into a passive aggressive version of herself making it painfully clear that she missed her friend and wanted her back. Frick did a great job in focusing the reader on the relationship between Ellory and Matthias than what Ret was doing in the background.

Every other chapter references a new point in time, each represented a month that had gone by in the past as well as the present. In the NOW, readers witness Ellory struggling with what was referred to as “the fall,” and how to give each one of her old friends and boyfriend forgiveness in order to move on. On the flip side, Frick is making it hard to stop turning the pages in order to discover what was terrible enough to rip a group of friends completely apart and send Ellory spiraling into a dark pit of guilt and depression.

Frick allows us to get close to each of her characters. She shares with us, what makes them tick, their secrets, and what makes them happy. Being that the novel starts out with a big happy group of friends and ends with one lone sad girl makes it hard to not feel for her and yank on our heart strings. See All The Stars is sure worth the read, with every flip of a page the story gets more and more intense leaving you with nothing but the desire to know what “the fall,” really was and why it happened. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE GIVEAWAY!