Ultraviolet

R. J. Anderson

 This book is to be released on 01 September 2011

Once upon a time there was a girl who was special.

This is not her story.

Unless you count the part where I killed her.

In this story, Alison wakes up to find that she is in a mental hospital and then she is sent to Pine Hill aka “Fine Pills” for her recovery.  She is unsure of the events that brought her there but as her memory starts returning, is convinced that she murdered the most popular girl in school, Tori.  Alison is different and has spent most of her life hiding those differences.  It is at Pine Hill where she discovers that her differences are not indicative of a mental illness, as she had previously believed, and finds a friend in Sebastian Faraday.   Sebastian is the one who helps Alison to figure out what really happened the day that Tori and she fought and how to remedy it.  It is hard to go into more detail without giving away the plot.

Dark chocolate, poured over velvet: that was how his voice tasted. I wanted him to follow me around and narrate the rest of my life.

This is the Goodreads synopsis: 

Sixteen-year-old Alison has been sectioned in a mental institute for teens, having murdered the most perfect and popular girl at school. But the case is a mystery: no body has been found, and Alison's condition is proving difficult to diagnose. Alison herself can't explain what happened: one minute she was fighting with Tori -- the next she disintegrated. Into nothing. But that's impossible. Right?

"Everybody has a story, Alison," he said. "Everybody has things they need to hide--sometimes even from themselves."

In Ultraviolet, the twists and turns of this plot are what keep you interested.  As soon as you think you have things figured out, something else happens.  It was easy to keep up with, but hard to predict.    I love the way this book delves into the world of mental illness and mingles it with science fiction but doesn’t come across as a cheesy book.  It made me cry in some spots.  It is well worth the read.  The cover, I’m not too sure about.  This is one of those times where you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

But there were worse things than disappointment, and I'd lived through several of them already.