"This Is Our Story"

"This is Our Story"
Written by Ashley Elston
Review written by Diana Iozzia


"This is Our Story" is a murder mystery for teens and young adults, however, I think that this book is not as appealing to an older audience. I personally still enjoy reading teen and young adult fiction, but I feel that the books that are published under the Disney name are often very muted and less thrilling than their plots describe them to be. In this story, Kate is a teen at a public high school, who has been secretly having a texting friendship and flirtation with a popular boy from the private and elite nearby school. When the boy, Grant, has been killed by a Remington, all signs point to the other boys that were out hunting with him.

We are launched in a small town murder mystery, that feels reminiscent of "Riverdale", "Sharp Objects", and a little of "Trial and Error". These teens have no idea what they're doing, still they can unlock all of these secrets, conspiracies, and crimes and find out who the killer is? There are many times during this story that I had to suspend my disbelief, not believing most of the actions by the characters.

To be frank, I think I would have enjoyed this book more as a print paperback, than I did when listening to it as an audiobook. 9 hours of this story felt too long to listen to, I felt the narration to be highly distracting, and there just really isn't much that goes on in this story. A lot of time is spent in text messages, interrogation transcripts, and main character, Kate, talking about how she couldn't believe what's going on, but that she WILL get to the bottom of this. Alright, that's fine. However, the story progressed far too slowly but also far too quickly. Every clue and reveal should not have been this easy to discover. Also, Kate's mother works at the District Attorney's office. So, Kate, in her internship, is allowed to be so heavily thrown into the investigation? This seems highly unlikely to ever exist in the real world, where a 17 year old girl is allowed to watch interrogation tapes, look at clues, and view crime scene evidence.

In addition, we're thrown a ridiculous bone that the person Kate thought she was talking to is another character. We're then expected to believe this immature and wacky relationship and first love between Kate and the murder suspect. My golly, are parents really this stupid to not see any of this happening? To continue, I really did not enjoy the eventual outcome of the trial and the reveal of the other murder suspects and then the actual killer. Everything felt extremely anticlimatic and too unbelievable. I'm not quite sure why I decided to listen to the entire audiobook. There just aren't enough redeeming qualities to recommend.