YA Review: The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone [Blog Tour]

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone by Adele Griffin, August 12, 2014. 256 pages. Published by Soho Teen. Source: publisher.

National Book Award-finalist Adele Griffin tells the fully illustrated story of a brilliant young artist, her mysterious death, and the fandom that won't let her go.

From the moment she stepped foot in NYC, Addison Stone’s subversive street art made her someone to watch, and her violent drowning left her fans and critics craving to know more. I conducted interviews with those who knew her best—including close friends, family, teachers, mentors, art dealers, boyfriends, and critics—and retraced the tumultuous path of Addison's life. I hope I can shed new light on what really happened the night of July 28.
—Adele Griffin

Adele Griffin's The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone was quite the interesting read as the author told it from the perspective of those who knew Addison Stone best. While I enjoyed the method the author used to tell the story and how visual the book was, to me, the characters were absolute train wrecks when you looked at their lives. So messy and broken.

On many levels this book made me sad. Sad for the characters and how their lives seemed to be spiraling out of control; their lack of healthy relationships made it hard to hope any of them would stay with Addison because she needed more help then either of them were capable of giving, especially when you take their own problems into consideration.
   So, while I felt the relationships never stood a chance, I found it interesting to see the way things worked between Addison and her many friends and boyfriends because it was, I guess you could say, human imperfection at it's most imperfect point. Like I said, this book made me sad because every seemed to have their own idea of what she needed without really seeing till it was too late that she was even more lost then they thought.

Enough about the characters and their problems, of which there were many. Lets talk about the writing and the presentation of the story.

With The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone being my first Adele Griffin book I had zero idea what to expect from her writing style. So, while I did have some problems with the characters, I did enjoy her writing because it really brought the story to life. Her writing pulled me in, even when at times I wanted to throw this book down because the Addison and her friends were making me sad with their choices, because I wanted to know how she would bring about the end of the story.
   So, Adele Griffin's writing and the vivid way she brought the characters and story to life, mixed with all the images, is what really pulled this book together and kept me reading. It was just one of those books that you could not walkaway from even if you wanted to.

Final Verdict: The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone- Dark and messy, is what comes to mind when I think of this book.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone earns

This book was received in exchange for an honest review.