Each chapter is told from Day’s point of view but ends with a diary entry from Julian. The story shifts between modes and formats, effectively compiling a file of fact and fiction for readers to sift through.

It also draws tension from Julian’s painful internal monologues and perpetual mourning.

Shutteris also filled with moments of spectacular detail and imagery, relying on the anonymity and ambiguity of photographic elements to build-and ultimately solve-Julian’s mystery. Throughout the book, Stolarz presents the kind of deep emotion and well-paced action common among the most successful of young-adult novels. Julian fights her every step of the way, but she refuses to stop searching through his past until she learns the whole truth-and the best way to exonerate him. With the whole world against Julian, Day calls upon her artistic and activist sensibilities to save him from himself. Stolarz writes Day as the embodiment of support and intimacy. When Day meets Julian, a juvenile detention escapee accused of murdering his parents, both find themselves on a journey neither could have predicted, hiding from police and seeking to solve the mystery of why and how Julian’s parents were killed. But even the stark reality captured in her photographs can’t piece together a world shattered by lies. Meet sixteen-year-old Day Conner, an activist and photographer, who wants to make sense of a world filled with injustice. It explores the romantic tension between subject and artists, truth and fallacy, and past and future, while revealing the perplexing realities of trauma and love. Shutter is another wonderfully chilling young-adult mystery from Laurie Faria Stolarz.

Project 17 by laurie faria stolarz