And Then I Found Out the Truth is the sequel to the delightful And Then Everything Unraveled, by the now beloved-by-me author Jennifer Sturman.
If you have not yet picked up and read your copy of And Then Everything Unraveled after Monday's review, then you need to go yonder and do so - avoiding this review like the plague. This review will hold nothing but spoilers of the first book and will burn your eyes if you try to read it (or I wish I could make it do that - as I hate people spoiling their personal reading experience!).
You have been warned.
Okay - so all of us who HAVE read And Then Everything Unraveled clamored for the sequel, right? Right.
Let's do a little recap of where we left off - Delia found out that she was correct in her assertions and her mother was truly alive and well and hiding out in South America with a potential new boyfriend (which Delia wasn't so sure she liked, but whatever, her Mom is alive!).
Some Bad People wanted T. K. dead and believed themselves to be successful. The tricky part now is to keep letting these Bad People think this, until Delia and company can build a good enough case against them to bring T. K. home.
In the meantime, Delia failed a test (though she doesn't think getting 44 answers right out of 100 is bad at all) and everybody is insisting she study - which makes her mystery solving and vanquishing of evildoers a whole lot harder. But she's still got Natalie, her brilliant but suddenly and inexplicably boy-crazy friend, her perhaps clinically insane but gorgeous and classic teen movie-loving Aunt Charley, and uptight and sometimes quite scary Aunt Patience.
Not to mention the tiny psychic that gets quite irritated with Delia about not believing her completely and totally.
And then there's Quinn... the guy who's kissed her twice but suddenly seems to be avoiding her. Does it have something to do with his potentially up-to-no-good father, or has he just lost interest?
Who knows? But Delia is as determined as ever to figure it all out.
So any of you who read my review of And Then Everything Unraveled know that I absolutely, positively adored it. Well, I'll admit I was super excited about reading this second book, and my expectations were high.
Maybe that's why I was a teeny, tiny bit disappointed...
Okay - don't flip out! Let me finish!!!
And Then I Found Out the Truth felt a bit slower to me, and with initial mystery of whether or not T. K. was alive being resolved, some of the clue-finding dampened. But all of this was small potatoes compared to my biggest pet peeve - too much recap!!! It seemed like every other paragraph of the first half of the novel was a summary of some information, scene, or something from And Then Everything Unraveled. It kind of pulled the momentum back and got a bit annoying.
HOWEVER - once that finally calmed down, I began to settle back into the lovely, eccentric cast and awesomeness of the book.
See, I told ya to let me finish!
I think it was just because I was so ready to continue the story, that I was irritated with the recaps. If it had been a while since I had read And Then Everything Unraveled it probably wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. But I had JUST read And Then Everything Unraveled and was ready to take off from where we left off.
Once I got over that, the fabulous dialogue, hilarious characters and situations, and tracking down and catching of the Bad People had that same sense of fun and whimsy that I loved about And Then Everything Unraveled. And an excellent new development: more time with Gwyneth, a look into her seemingly absent personality, which manages to be both fascinating, terrifying, and truly and honestly awesome.
This mish mash of a family is both nonstop funny and warm, leaving And Then I Found Out the Truth to be exciting, romantic, and wholly entertaining - my doubts and fears of the recap-filled first half left in the dust, forgotten. And a hope for a third novel fluttering in my bibliophile heart.
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