List 3 different traits that describe your protagonist, and justify one trait with a clear, detailed example.

Stubborn Secretive Broken

One very important trait of Sophie (the protagonist) is her stubbornness. It very much defines her character and person. When Sophie was 14 she suffered a near-fatal car crash causing her right leg to be crushed and have titanium rods screwed into what little of her bones remained, and her back causing her problems for the rest of her life. And yet even with all these circumstances she still did not want anybody to help her, she kept going on with her life, but she was always in pain. Eventually she ended up being addicted to Oxy, the medication that was supposed to be helping her. Her stubbornness however does have some negativity towards it, such as her in the beginning not being able to face that she is a drug addict. Sophie had kept on refusing the truth until it finally hit her, she realized she may never see her best friend again until she got better.

Not one of Sophie's family or friends believed Sophie's side of the story when Mina (her best friend) was murdered. Everyone, including the detective and police simply believed that it was a drug deal for Sophie gone wrong, they came to that conclusion by the false evidence planted by the murderer. Sophie's parents had send Sophie to a rehab center(that was the only way, no charges were pressed against her) Sea Side. When Sophie lest Sea Side she went straight to solving and cracking the case of Mina's murder, she immediately started interrogating any suspects or any people who might have even the slightest clue about Mina's murder/why she was murdered. Of every single person she interrogated she stood her ground and pestered them with questions. Most of them may have thought she was crazy and psycho but Sophie had managed to get out crucial information out of them. And yet no matter how hard her situation had become with almost everyone had turned against he, she still remained clean and sober from any sort of drugs even when her body (and some parts of her mind) basically begged for her to let go, she stayed clean because she knew that Mina would've wanted that for her.

What is the main conflict of the book? Explain it clearly.

The main conflict in the book is Sophie trying to figure out who is Mina's murderer and the reason why she was murdered. Along the way she tries to convince her and Mina's closest friends her side of the story and to for them to help her, because she knows that the police nor the detective will listen to her or believe her. As Sophie goes deeper and deeper into solving the case of Mina's murder case, her secrets are seeping through and she struggles to keep them hidden from her family, friends, and herself. All along the story Sophie continues to battle her addiction for Oxy and tries to stay clean by chanting over and over again her little "mantra" as she likes to call it "Nine months. Two weeks. Six days. Thirteen hours.", and yet all throughout the story she remains clean.

If you had to summarize the plot in 5-8 points, what would the points be?

When Sophie was 14 she was in a near-fatal car crash leaving her with scars, a destroyed leg, and a fractured spine that causes her to have back problems for the rest of her spine. When Sophie is 16 she gets addicted to Oxy (pain killers) she once used for medication, she then used to use it to escape reality. Mina, Sophie's best friend finds out about her addiction and tells Sophie's parents. Sophie's parents then force her to go to her aunt's for rehab, she stays there for about a month. When Sophie is 17, Mina is murdered right in front of her eyes. All of Sophie friends and family believe the fake evidence that was planted on her; a drug deal gone wrong. No matter how much she protested that it wasn't the truth and that she was still clean, nobody believed her. After all why was only Mina murdered and not her? Sophie's parents send her to a rehab facility called Sea Side, she stays there for 7 months waiting and plotting to find Mina's murderer. When Sophie is let out of rehab she goes to the first suspect on her list, Kyle. Mina's ex-boyfriend. According to one of Kyle's best friends they had a major fight the night of Mina's death. Sophie figures out that he doesn't have anything to do with Mina's murder, and she decides to let him help her. Along with another of Sophie's friends, Rachel. Rachel had found Sophie in the middle of the road looking for help on the night of Mina's death. Sophie searches Mina's room for any clues or anything to help her figure out who her murderer was and why. She ends up finding a USB drive in one of Mina's hiding places. Sophie goes to Rachel ( Rachel is a hacker) for her to crack Mina's password for the USB, they crack the code and up discovering why Mina was murdered. Mina was working on a case of Jackie Dennings (a teenager who disappeared 3 years ago and was never found). Mina chasing after a story got her killed. ( She works for the local newspaper) With all the information they discovered from Mina's notes, all evidence pointed to Matt Clarke (Jackie Dennings boyfriend) but Sophie discovers the true murderer which is Adam Clarke. She discovers this by being kidnapped by Adam whilst being slightly drugged. Adam takes Sophie to the place of where Mina was murdered and where Jackie disappeared too. However Adam wasn't the one that killed Jackie, his dad did, Sophie's old soccer coach; Coach Rob Adam was put into jail suffering adult charges,(Adam had killed Mina because she knew too much about the case of Jackie) Coach Rob was put into jail for life, for having an illegal relationship with a minor and for the murder of Jackie Dennings (they found her body in his backyard). Everyone guilty apologizes for not believing in Sophie and for turning their backs on her when she needed them the most. Sophie finally goes to Mina's grave, something that she had been dreading and avoided doing. When she goes there though she doesn't feel at peace, all she feels is sadness, sad knowing that Mina will never be able to live a nice long happy life that she deserves, and guilty, guilty for not being the one that was murdered and how much she wishes it was herself and not Mina because in Sophie's mind she believes that Mina is just such a better person than she'll ever hope to be.

Explain the climax of your story

The climax of my story is when Sophie, Kyle, Rachel, and Trevor think they have figured out who the murderer is. They had come to the conclusion that the murderer was Matt Clarke. They had thought that Matt had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and when she did not want to get rid of the baby, he killed her. So when Mina 3 years later starts to re-open the case about Jackie, they think that Matt does not want anyone to find out, so he kills her too. But they had come to the wrong conclusion, Sophie realized that only too late. Sophie meets up with Adam at a party and then she starts to feel funny and her vision goes all blurry, she then realizes that she had been drugged by Adam when he offered her a drink. Adam kidnaps Sophie, and to her to a forest. Pioneer Rock. Sophie now knows that it was actually Adam that had killed Mina, covering for his brother. Adam was busy talking on the phone with whomever but luckily for Sophie he had forgotten to her phone away, even with her hands tied up she still manages to send a text to her friend Trevor "addam pinerock 911" Sophie nearly escapes Adam by crashing his car, she runs and hides as far as her bad leg can carry her. As she hides, she over hears a conversation she thinks is with Adam and Matt, but Adam starts babbling to who she thinks is Matt

"- But I saw her get into your truck that da I know what you did to Jackie. But I didn't tell anyone; not even Mom or Matt. I thought it would be okay. But then Mina started asking questions. I had to stop her-I had to."

As the sudden realization jolts through her she realizes they had been suspecting the wrong person the whole time.

List 3 traits to describe any character, and justify one trait with a clear detailed example.

Caring Courageous Stubborn

Mina is the girl who gets murdered in the story, but throughout Far From You Sophie receives flash back of the times before and a little after of Mina's death. Based on these flashbacks you can clearly see many examples and traits of Mina. One of the most important ones in my opinion is Courageous. Courageous because when Sophie found out that Mina was receiving threating messages and yet she continued to go deeper and deeper of solving the mystery of Jackie Dennings, a case that had gone cold for more than two years. Mina also shows courage when she found out that Sophie had become a drug addict from Oxy, she knew that if she would tell Sophie's parents she could potentially lose her best friend, Sophie. And yet she knew that if she didn't Sophie would more than likely die from an drug overdose. Another example is when after the car crash of when her and Sophie were 14, Sophie had become "handicapped", so in order to make Sophie's life easier she asked the entire grade to help out with Sophie's situation. She had asked all the muscular boys to help out with Sophie with her books and moving around from class to class, for the girls she asked for any sort of scarves and bracelets to help cover up Sophie's scars, she knew how much she hated them. This shows courage because Mina has social anxiety, so she simply just hates talking to people/meeting and starting small talk with brand new people, especially large crowds, but she put it away and talked to every grade 9 to help out with Sophie's situation.

Describe the setting of the book using descriptive, sensory language.

Pioneer Rock: Pioneer Rock is the place where Sophie and Mina used to hang out a lot when the weather was nice, it was also the place where Adam had taken Sophie to kill her. Fortunately for Sophie she survived the incident. Pine Rock is a place where many tourists and sometimes locals like to camp out, however Pioneer Rock is a huge place, it is quite easy to get lost in. On the west side of pine rock there is a very large beautiful blue/green lake, and if you look further you can see even more of luscious dark green forests. If you go deep into the forest of pine rock you will stumble across a field of just slowly decaying brown grass with 4 large grey covered moss boulders, large enough to hide in. That is where Sophie had hid whilst hiding from Adam Clarke. Pioneer Rock smells of that sweet pine wood smell, and on late summer nights you could catch wisps of smoke and firewood smell, pine wood is a place where many would just come out and enjoy walking out in the beautiful scenic nature view while some others would just stroll for a while and fall asleep to sounds of the glorious outdoors. Sometimes Pioneer Rock would be used for high school parties where they would in late evenings and end at early, early morning when the sun has just woken up and its rays of light seeping through the darkness and announcing that today is a new day. However for Sophie, it is just another place where she simply hates going or even talking about. It just gives her a painful reminder of her happy days with Mina, and the traumatic event with her old childhood soccer coach, and how each time he crosses her mind she winces from betrayal and disgust. A place where you once were almost killed is not a place where not anyone would want to visit again, either physically or emotionally.

Explain 3 clues that are given throughout the story.

One very important clue is when they find the business card of Margaret Chase who is an adoption counsellor. When Sophie and Rachel were looking through Mina's notes they had stumble across the business card, their suspicions were then immediately confirmed that Jackie was more than likely pregnant. They had gotten suspicious when Sophie was listening to Mina's interview recorded tapes, Mina had asked Matt (Jackie's boyfriend) if they were in any way 'intimate', he had clearly stated in not any way that they were. However Sophie had wondered why on earth would Jackie have a business card for an adoption agency?

Another clue is when Amy, Jackie's younger sister had indeed confirmed of Jackie's pregnancy, she said she had found a pregnancy test, but at the time she was only 11 , so she had absolutely no idea of what it actually was. Amy later figured out 2 years later after her sister's disappearance of what she had found in her older sister's, Jackie's bedroom. Amy never told anyone except for Mina, because she trusted her, the only reason why she told Sophie was because she somehow knew that Sophie was just going to keep on pestering and pestering her over and over again so she just gave in right at the start. Sophie and her friends had come to the conclusion that Matt had wanted to get rid of the baby but Jackie didn't, maybe somehow by accident or on purpose he had in someway killed and hid the body of Jackie Dennings.

Another last crucial important clue is when Mina is hiding for her life and she over hears the conversation of whom she thinks is Adam and Matt speaking but when Adam starts talking and sprouting to be what Sophie thinks is nonsense, it finally hits her. Matt has nothing to do with the disappearance of Jackie nor the murder of Mina it was just his brother and father.

"- But I saw her get into your truck that day. I know what you did to Jackie. But I didn't tell anyone; not even Mom or Matt. I thought it would be okay. But then Mina started asking questions. I had to stop her-I had to."

What is your personal rating of the novel? Give it up to 4 stars, and justify your opinions.

My personal rating of the novel is 2 stars. The story plot was very poorly written and there was un nesscearry romance side plot, and all the events took much too long basically dragging out the events, especially in the start of the story. Although i did particularly enjoy some of the flashbacks some of them were somewhat important but most were just completely useless. I also felt that not much actual excitement or action started happening until near the end of the novel, which disappointed me. I also didn't particularly like of how they had very little clues and you couldn't come up with any other suspects except for the ones the novel gave you. All the clues they had were false and a complete plot twist but it was very un tastefully done. In the beginning I actually sort of enjoyed reading the story but nothing was happening for a while and the story would just be dragging on and when something actually somewhat exciting happened nothing would happen for many chapters making the story drag on and you end up just wanting the story to end. To be completely honest I would highly not recommend to this to anybody, although the author's writing style was nicely descriptive and gave you clear images of the characters and scenery it was simply just the story plot that was particularly boring. I suppose what i did not like the most was the fact that the clues led you to only one conclusion and all in all there wasn't that many characters, and you couldn't guess and feel that sense of wonder and excitement you usually feel whilst reading a good mystery novel. I wish to say that I somewhat enjoyed it but maybe this book just simply wasn't my sort of book