Book Review: Rosebush

TITLE: Rosebush
AUTHOR: Michele Jaffe
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Mystery, drama
PREMISE: Jane wakes up in the hospital to learn that she was in a hit and run accident. But then she starts getting threats, which imply that her accident was no accident.
MY REVIEW: Finally, someone writes a nice juicy YA mystery. I swear, this genre is like dead in YA or something. About the only person I know who is doing a mystery (that doesn't involve some sort of fantasy/paranormal/other element) is Sara Shepard with Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game. Oh, and if you want to count Gossip Girl as a mystery...I particularly don't. So this was a nice refreshing book. I've read Jaffe's other YA books, the Bad Kitty series so I was really looking forward to this one. I'm happy so say this is not only just as good and enjoyable as Bad Kitty, it's better.
Jaffe's writing has improved by leaps and bounds. Granted she is guilty of throwing a few theosaurus words here and there which occasionally got annoying but the rest of the writing is pretty good. She managed to flesh out three dimensional characters, create loads of suspense (I was guessing through the whole thing), and has many twists and turns. At times it did feel a bit like Pretty Little Liars but it has something those particular books don't: characters I actually LIKE and good writing. Look, I like PLL but the writing leaves a lot to be desired, it's one of those that translates better on TV.
The book is not completely perfect. The ending was a tad rushed and sometimes the flashbacks got annoying (even if they were important into adding character detail). However, those are very minor complaints to a otherwise very good book. I hope that Jaffe does a sequel like it looks like she's doing because I'm DYING to find out what happened with Bonnie. No pun intended.
WHO SHOULD READ: Fans of Pretty Little Liars, mystery fans, fans of Bad Kitty
MY RATING: Four and a half out of Five roses