[Review] Message Not Found – Dante Medema

Message Not Found – Dante Medema

Young Adult- Romance, mystery, …

Mars 2022

An emotionally complex portrayal of secrets, loss, and grief from Dante Medema, Indies Introduce author of the Indie Next Pick title The Truth Project.

Bailey and Vanessa shared everything: laughter, secrets, and packets of Pop Rocks to ward off bad days. But that all changed the night Vanessa left Bailey’s, headed for home, and ended up swerving off a cliff nowhere near her house. Now Bailey, who thought she knew Vanessa better than anyone in the world, is left with a million unanswered questions, and the only person with answers is gone.

To help grieve her loss, Bailey creates a chat bot of Vanessa using years’ worth of their shared text messages and emails. The more data she uploads to the bot, the more it feels like she’s really talking to her best friend. That is, until the bot starts dropping hints that there was more going on with Vanessa than Bailey realized—a secret so big, it may have contributed to Vanessa’s death.

This compelling puzzle of a story, filled with engrossing twists and turns, is written in alternating prose and text message formats. Tens will gobble up this fast-paced page-turner.

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I discovered this book on TikTok through the author’s page. It was month ago way before it got release. I remember adding it to my wish-list straight away because I did not want to forget about it when it would be released. (I just checked and it was back in September! Wow)

As soon as it was released I couldn’t wait to get into it. And I was NOT disappointed. I adored the author’s writing, and I can’t wait to read her debut novel soon.

In “Message Not Found” you follow Bailey after the death of Vanessa, her best friend. She wants to discover the truth behind her death, because she knows there was a reason why she ended up on that path that night instead of staying at her sleepover.

All through the books you discover Bailey, Mason, Cade, Esther and many more characters who are all very interesting and bring something to the story.

I had not guess one of the big twist, which was quite surprising because it was not that hard to understand but the way the author wrote the whole story, I don’t know, that threw me off completely! So it was really amazing.

I cried, yes. It was beautiful. A story about friendship, love, family, secrets, loss and grief. Everything I love reading about.

Last but not least, can we talk about the cover? It’s stunning isn’t it?! This was the first thing that caught my eyes to be honest.

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Dante Medema is an author of books for young readers. Her debut novel, The Truth Project, was an Indies Introduce title and an Indies Next List Pick. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her husband, four daughters, and a room full of alien memorabilia—and books, of course. When she’s not writing, she dabbles in baking, decorating, painting, sewing, and reading up on Enneagram personality types.

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5/5⭐️ + ❤️

Morgane. x