A review by whimsicallymeghan
Moment of Truth by Kasie West

4.0

Hadley lives in the constant shadow of her perfect, yet dead, brother, Eric. All her parents seem to care about are his things because every day is “Eric Day” in her household. She throws herself into swimming, closing off the world around her to try to be the best she can be, so maybe her parents will notice her. When someone dressed up as Heath Hall, a fictitious vigilante, jumps in her pool and ruins her race, she’s determined to find out who he is. But finding out is a lot harder than it seems and requires a lot of talking to people she’s never talked to. It really starts to open her up and makes her realize there’s more to life than swimming. This was a really good novel; it not only had teen drama, in a good way, but it also had real, honest, messy emotional plots, too. This could be such a rollercoaster to read as we were on the journey with Hadley to rediscovering who she is as a person and letting the people who love her into her life. The reader liked the balance of Hadley with her parents and battling that struggle, layered with the softer more fun plot of figuring out who Heath Hall was and her budding connect with Jackson. West did a great job of giving each plot it’s proper space; this never felt too heavy or too light of a read. The plot was engaging, even when the reader didn’t always expect it to be; they feared that the mystery of it all would drag on for too long, but it didn’t. Instead, it was the perfect length with a good payoff. There was a chance that the ending could have come off as lazy, but it worked here and the reader liked it. As for the plot with her parents, that paid off well, too. West did a really good job of creating this whole scene that helped move this plot. If not for it, this probably wouldn’t have worked or felt believable; it would have felt like her parents, especially her mom, were realizing things too quickly just to get to the end. Instead, because of the previous scene it put everything together to feel more likely a possibility. But those scenes between the two could be so emotionally charged and they were written so well. The characters in this were good, but they could all feel slightly two dimension at times. A lot of the background characters just felt there for the purpose of being there and not because they were actually memorable. Like, Hadley had a dad, couldn’t tell you a thing about him; her best friend was only there just so Hadley could find out who Heath Hall was, it was like Hadley needed these figures in her life so they were just placeholder characters with no personality. Hadley as a character was developed; she did start off a little boring, but she came through as she progressed through the novel. Jackson is probably the stand-out character as he was funny, whether he was trying to be or not; he had a lot of personality and he basically drained it away from all the other characters, like a personality vampire. In the end though, despite having some character issues, this was still a lot of fun and had everything you could want in a young adult contemporary.