Choker Review

TITLE Choker
AUTHOR Elizabeth Woods
PUBLICATION January 4, 2012 by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
READ May 4 - 5, 2012
BUY IT Amazon / The Book Depository

Sixteen-year-old Cara Lange has been a loner ever since she moved away from her best and only friend, Zoe, years ago. She eats lunch with the other girls from the track team, but they're not really her friends. Mostly she spends her time watching Ethan Gray from a distance, wishing he would finally notice her, and avoiding the popular girls who call her "Choker" after a humiliating incident in the cafeteria.

Then one day Cara comes home to find Zoe waiting for her. Zoe's on the run from problems at home, and Cara agrees to help her hide. With her best friend back, Cara's life changes overnight. Zoe gives her a new look and new confidence, and next thing she knows, she's getting invited to parties and flirting with Ethan. Best of all, she has her BFF there to confide in.

But just as quickly as Cara's life came together, it starts to unravel. A girl goes missing in her town, and everyone is a suspect—including Ethan. Worse still, Zoe starts behaving strangely, and Cara begins to wonder what exactly her friend does all day when she's at school. You're supposed to trust your best friend no matter what, but what if she turns into a total stranger?

Choker was a steal of a deal that I picked up at Chapters in hardcover for $4.99.  I will admit, the price was right and the cover was pretty so I didn't even read anything about it.  Right before I started reading this I perused the reviews on Goodreads (which I NEVER do but decided to for some strange reason this time) and I read a spoiler. A big huge, slap in the face spoiler that basically gave away the entire book to me. I liked the idea of the twist, and was very curious to see how the story would play out, so I dug right in and I still REALLY enjoyed this book.  If I can offer you one piece of advice though, it would be to stay away from too many reviews of this one before you read it because I imagine this would have been a mind blowing experience had I not known. 

The story starts off pretty typically, the stage is set at a high school and we are introduced to our outcasted MC.  Cara Lange can't seem to get anything right and she is about as clumsy as they come.  The cherry is put on top of her outcast cake when one day at lunch she chokes on a carrot and has to get the heimlich from the boy of her dreams, Ethan Gray. Of course there is the group of mean girls who are out to make Cara's life as terrible as possible and from then on they deem her "Choker." Enter Cara's childhood friend Zoe, she shows up at Cara's house right when Cara needs her the most after running away from her abusive stepfather. Thing's start to get very eerie once Zoe shows up and you can tell from the get go that the girl is bad news.

The majority of characters in Choker are pretty standard.  We have the hot guy who is dating the evil queen bee of the school and her little minions. We have absent parents and our clumsy MC.  Even though they are quite typical I didn't find that it bothered me at all.  There is so much mystery to the story and I was constantly wondering what direction the story was going in, there were so many different ways it could have gone.  It's a short novel at only 233 pages which served the story wonderfully because it felt perfectly paced and it didn't stray off from the main story at all.

This was a very good read, that I imagine would have been even better had I not ruined it for myself by changing the way I go about things. I am trying to be as vague as possible in this review because I really think you should know nothing about it before you read it. My advice to you is to go into this one blind, don't read up on it and just jump on the ride, it will not disappoint!