Ugh... I really wanted to like this book. I really did. But every time I thought I could maybe look past the shortcomings, a new fault reared its ugly head. Bleh... 
 So how did Reconstructing Amelia earn its stars? 
 I like the idea of the story. A girl, Amelia, has supposedly committed suicide by jumping off her school's roof but cryptic messages after the investigation suggest otherwise. It has the idea of a great story, and I latched onto that idea. 
 It's also a quick read. I breezed through it in just a couple days. 
 And how did the book lose stars? 
 It was completely unbelievable! 
 (view spoiler)[ 
 There is no way in hell a possible homicide would be investigated in this manner. It's like the author did absolutely zero research into murder investigations and police procedures. The family of the victim just isn't brought along to interviews. Detectives don't share the addresses of persons of interest. The victim's family just isn't involved in this manner. 
 Kate, Amelia's mom, had suspicions about the suicide ruling, but never pushed for anything else. And then, come to find out, other people had a hard time believing the suicide, too. No one said anything? Nobody banded together to put pressure on the police? I don't buy it. 
 Other plot points seemed to be thrown in for convenience. All the different originators of anonymous text messages. It got to a point where I felt the author was thinking: "Okay, how can I make this person harder to discover? ...... Oh, I know! I'll just do some more anonymous text messages." It became redundant. 
 And after learning what really happened to Amelia, so many characters and twists of the story seemed completely unnecessary. Like they were thrown in to make the investigation messy but learning the real outcome makes everything seem silly and lack substance and purpose. 
 And there are so many other things I could go on and on about, but it would start to get annoying. (hide spoiler)] 
 Basically, everything came off as phony to me. The idea is what really saved it for me and kept from just all-out hating the book. The idea had me still wanting to know what happened despite all the flaws and mistakes. 
 An okay story. Certainly not good and I wouldn't even say average. Wouldn't recommend, but I can see where high schoolers might be into it. There was so much potential, but Kimberly McCreight just totally missed the mark.