Book 18: All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry

Two girls disappeared from their small, Puritan-esque town; only Judith came back, tongueless, unable or unwilling to tell the town what happened to her and her friend. This book wasn't quite what I thought it would be. The story itself actually ended up being a lot less dark than I'd expected. The real flair Berry's story is how the facts of Judith's disappearance are slowly uncovered over the course of the book as she slowly gains the confidence and the urgency to let her story be known, so I'm hesitant to go into detail about any aspect of the plot; I don't want to inadvertently give anything away... I loved Judith's friendships with Maria and Darrell, but I wish they had gone a little deeper; they seem to serve only as the means by which Judith begins to work on overcoming her injury rather than playing major roles during any of the heroine's crises. I groaned a little bit when I realized that whole book was written in second-person narration to Judith's childhood sweetheart, but it actually ended up working really well for this story. Solid B-.