When I Am Through With You by Stephanie Keuhn (Spoiler-free!) Review

“This isn’t meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I’m in jail at the moment. I imagine I’ll be here a long time, considering. But I’m not writing this down for absolution and I’m not sorry for what I did to Rose. I’m just not. Not for any of it.” Ben Gibson is many things, but he’s not sorry and he’s not a liar. He will tell you exactly what happened on what started as a simple school camping trip in the mountains. About who lived and who died. About who killed and who had the best of intentions. But he’s going to tell you in his own time. Because after what happened on that mountain, time is the one thing he has plenty of.

What was supposed to be a short camping trip in the mountains turns into a fight for survival for 7 teens and their History teacher. Everyone is there for different reasons, some for extra credit in school, some for extra money, and some for unknown reasons. Our main character, Ben, is there for the money. His teacher, Mr. Howe, offers him a job to lead this camping trip for some extra cash. Ben is always looking for ways to make money since he is the sole provider of his household. Ben and his mom were in an accident when he was a child that led to his frontal lobe to have been damaged. His mother was injured to the point of not being able to work. Ben’s damage to his frontal lobe leads him to suffer from terrible migraines, which make an appearance a few times while on this camping trip, leaving him incapacitated for hours at a time. There are many other obstacles that these teens must overcome to survive, but you’ll have to read the book to find out the whole story.

Guys, I really loved this book. You know from the very beginning that Ben kills his girlfriend, Rose. I found myself trying to solve the puzzle as to why the entire time I was reading. It turns out I wasn’t able to guess why until towards the second half of the book. This is when everything starts to come together and make sense. I had a lot of fun playing the guessing game while reading.

There were so many times in this book that I found myself frustrated with the decisions that some of the characters made that I wanted to scream! This didn’t necessarily make the book annoying to read,  like in some cases it can. Every decision added to the plot which allowed the story to end the way it did.

When I Am Through With You was an entertaining read. I’m a big fan of survival stories and thrillers, so when I read the synopsis for this book, I knew I had to get my hands on it! It was well written with characters that did not fall flat. Each had their own issues and their own stories.

I wouldn’t say this book was unpredictable, as I usually hope for when reading a thriller. At times I had no clue what would happen, but as things played out I began to be able to guess how the story would end. This didn’t take away from the story though and I still really enjoyed reading it.

However, there are a few things that bothered me. Some loose ends never got tied up, and I wish the ending would have been just a bit longer to tie the story up in a neat little bow. We didn’t get closure for some of the characters and I felt like I was left hanging. Still, in the end this was a fun, entertaining read.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys survivor stories or thrillers. I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. Publication date is August 1, 2017.

Thank you to Penguin’s First to Read program for an advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review.