ARC Review--Nearly Found by Elle Cosimano

The sequel to the highly praised and intricately plotted Nearly Gone--a YA urban mystery that's perfect for fans of Bones, Numbers, and The Body Finder

After Nearly Boswell starts working as an intern at a crime lab, a girl from her trailer park turns up dead. Then the corpse of a missing person is discovered, buried on a golf course, with a message for Nearly etched into the bones. When Nearly finds out the corpse is the father of Eric, a classmate of hers, she starts to worry that the body is connected to her father's disappearance five years ago. Nearly, Reece, and Nearly's classmates--Vince, Jeremy, and Eric--start a dangerous investigation into their fathers' pasts that threatens Nearly's fragile romance with Reece, and puts all them in the killer's path.

I received this ARC from a local indie bookstore on Independent Book Store Day, I was in no way compensated for this review.

 
WARNING: There will be spoilers from Nearly Gone in this review! Read at your own risk if you haven't read Nearly Gone yet!


Elle Cosimano's Nearly Found is the companion to her stellar debut Nearly Gone! I don't know if this is meant to be a series, trilogy, or a duology, but I must say that I enjoyed this one just as much as the first!

I will warn you that despite this being a "companion" if you haven't read Nearly Gone beforehand you will be spoiled entirely. But if for whatever reason you didn't want to read the first one--which you so should!--I would say you could follow along with the story easy enough. Don't get me wrong, huge events happened in Nearly Gone and they're referenced here, but basically to make life easier, read the first book because it was soooo awesome!

It's been a few months since TJ's conviction. Nearly's life is finally starting to turn towards normal, but there have been dramatic changes. Her friends, Jeremy and Anh had given her the cold shoulder for months. Kids at school still give her odd looks. And then there's her relationship with Reece which starts to bring up new complications as well. Now Nearly is about to start her senior year of high school and one of the first things she wants to do is participate in an internship where she would work in a forensics lab. She still plans to go to college and will need money for that.

It's not long though before things start getting dicey. Jeremy receives a strange note, than Vince, then Eric her lab partner in her Computer class, and then Nearly gets one herself. The feeling of deja vu hits and soon Nearly finds herself in another dangerous mystery with a killer leaving more cryptic clues for her. Some of the clues go back to her theory with the Periodic Table but the other clues prove more difficult in a sense to undercover their hiding meaning. I won't get into that, best to let you all bask in the mystery as well!

And what a mystery it was! I felt like I was devising my own suspicions for this one, but again, I was still far from the truth. This one brings back the mystery of Nearly's father and the alleged poker club he was apart of. Nearly finds that she and her classmates have more in common then she thought possible. And I have to say again, wow!

This mystery felt so vast compared to the last one! There's more going on this time though. All these different occurrences happening and eventually at the end, we see how it all fits together, but prior to that I was totally at a lost! But that's not to say it was a bad thing either! I love mysteries like that. Ones that have you trying to piece together every bit of evidence and possible evidence! It's exhilarating! 

Although I was sad to see Reece missing for most of the first half. He gets a new assignment at a high school across town and it puts a clink into his relationship with Nearly. I felt conflicted over that too. I understood why Nearly was hurt by some of Reece's actions, but at the same time, I felt like smacking her a bit and saying, "remember he's still a narc?!" But again, I understood why Nearly was hurt because her points were valid. Basically it was a conflicting mess! LOL! But there were still stolen moments, moments when you saw Reece and you knew the truth and I must say, I loved those moments!

The final reveal at the ending was yet another shocker! I saw bits of it coming, but I was still struggling to put together the whys of it all. It was quite shocking and scary even, in a way. What I still want to know more about is Nearly's father. I feel like we keep getting hints of who he was and what all he did, but there's still the question of where is he? Will we ever see him? Will he own up to what he did? What's worse is that I can't tell if this is a series yet. This is called a companion to the first book. Right there in purple and white (the colors of my ARC). So I am dying to know if there's more! It's going to be a guessing game from this point out! I just hope that there's more, because this series...duology?...or whatever we want to call it is freaking amazing!

In this one we see more characters and I loved watching them grow and develop as well. People we thought we knew before in the first book we see in a different light in this one! I can't say much about it, because again, I'd rather let you experience it for yourselves, but I just hope that this isn't the end and we can see more of it in future reads!

Nearly Found was creeptastically amazing! I love the edge, the mystery and the creepiness. I love that Nearly has a special talent that makes her not quite normal. I love the bits of romance filtered into the pages. I love it all! The suspense, the danger, everything! This is one series I highly recommend to all mystery/thriller readers out there!


Overall Rating 5/5 stars


Nearly Found releases June 2, 2015