What do readers think of In Search of the Rose Notes by Emily Arsenault? Write your own review.

I think this book might best be appreciated by a Young Adult/High School audience. The juxtaposition of adult (present day) and young teen (childhood memories) perspectives did not work well for me. The story also will probably appeal to a young audience. Adult readers looking for a literary mystery filled with suspense and well-developed characters will be disappointed.

The friendship between Nora and Charlotte began on the first day of kindergarten, and by the time the girls are eleven they have developed a mutual history that lacks mutual respect. At least that is the viewpoint of Nora, who narrates this story that twists between three points in time. We meet the girls when they are eleven and bedazzled by Rose, an older high school girl who babysits them after school. One night, after walking Nora home, Rose disappears without a trace. In 2006, Charlotte calls Nora, who is now happily married and long gone from her hometown, to tell her that Rose's bones have been found. Keys to the disintegration of the girls' friendship, the trauma of Rose's disappearance, and Nora's suicidal breakdown, however, are buried in the experiences of 2006, when Charlotte and Nora are in high school. Clues and red herring are scattered throughout Nora's telling, and the reader is never sure if Nora is revealing the truth or her own fears and fantasies. It's an engrossing and suspenseful symphony. Fans of psychological mysteries should like this one.

Life isn't easy especially when you are a pre-teen growing up in a small town. This book has a bit about friendships gone bad and friendships that are lost forever. A bit of intrique is thrown in to keep the reader interested. Definitely not a must read this book would fit into the category of an average beach read.

If all authors had this gift for character development, every book we read would be a treasured jewel. The obvious draw in this novel is the reader’s ardent desire to find out what happened to Rose, that fateful day. The not-so-obvious draw is the way the author peels away all the layers of the characters, year by year alternating between then and now, keeping us not only engaged but genuinely interested in the ultimate outcome. My favorite book reading genre is historical fiction, but once in a while a mystery comes across my lap that pulls me away from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries and drops me into a world of intrigue and surprise. If this book had a moral, it would be that sometimes the choices we make have dire consequences.

If your teenage years were perplexing ones, then this novel shows you were not alone. While alternating time frames can be disconcerting in some novels, they help support who these characters were and have become. It is a tough book because it has not been a happy time for them and, in the end, it is not clear that the solving the mystery of Rose's disappearance will make a difference. A melancholy book but worth reading if you want to share the lives of your novel's charaters from either the adult or teen perspective. I would recommend the book and would read it again.

Generally, the use of flashbacks or alternating chapters by time periods are irritating, annoying and a sign of poor writing. "In Search of Rose Notes," does not fall into the latter in spite of the alternative narratives. The contrast presented are different strands of the story and never get in each others way. The author builds the emotional ties to Nora, the putative narrator, by letting us see her at two times of life, and allows the events of an earlier day come clear as she works through the confusion of the past and teenage angst. A good read.

I've always felt you should give a book at least 100 pages to get the reader wrapped into the plot; sometimes it just takes awhile for the writer to get the pieces of the story in place. Alas, even well after 100 pages of In Search of Rose Notes the book left this reader wondering if the book would ever gain momentum. I did stick it out to the end, but it was only out of the commitment to read and review the book. This mystery simply did not deliver - the plot was slow and the characters lacked much dimension.