Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.

Choker is one of those novels I've been longing to read ever since reading the summary of it (and I absolutely love that cover, it's a gorgeous color scheme, with the ring of trees bearing down as if to choke the reader), and I was ecstatic when I finally noticed it (totally by accident!) at my library. It was the first of my picks to read, and I breezed through it in a day.

I was a tiny bit disappointed in the novel itself, but it's actually a pretty damn decent addition to the mystery/thriller area of YA fiction.

The novel focuses on Cara, who lives one of those awful teen lives as the butt of many jokes from the bitchy, popular girls. And honestly, she has nothing in her life that would make her stand out as a YA heroine. Yes, the story is about her, but there's so little to Cara as a person that we could have been reading about anyone else and the story would probably have progressed in the same manner. I wish there'd been a little bit more to her, that she could have stood up for herself once or twice. I did like that she slowly began to connect with school friends and developed a nice sort of budding romance with Ethan, her crush.

The addition of Zoe in Cara's life leads to a bit of a pick me up for Cara, but more importantly, Zoe added a bit of a kick to the plot. Once she was in the picture things took a turn for the interesting, and I spent half the time I was reading boggling at her crazy behavior and wondering if my own thoughts on whodunit were right.

(I was wrong, by the way. I can usually figure out the answer to the mystery before I'm done reading, but the reveal kicked me in the face and then laughed about it.)

In the end, Choker is a well done mystery with a character I would have liked a little more color from, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.