KETCHUP CLOUDS (ANNABEL PITCHER)

Story Description:
Little, Brown Books|November 12, 2013|Hard Cover|ISBN: 978-0-316-24676-7



Dear Mr. S. Harris,

Ignore the blob of red in the top left corner. It's jam, not blood, though I don't think I need to tell you the difference. It wasn't your wife's jam the police found on your shoe...

I know what it's like.

Mine wasn't a woman. Mine was a boy. And I killed him exactly three months ago.
 Zoe has an unconventional pen pal - Mr. Stuart Harris, a Texas Death Row inmate and convicted murderer. But then again, Zoe has an unconventional story to tell. A story about how she fell for two boys, betrayed one of them, and killed the other.

Hidden away in her backyard shed in the middle of the night with a jam sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other, Zoe gives a voice to her heart and her fears after months of silence. Mr. Harris may never respond to Zoe's letters, but at least somebody will know her story - somebody who knows what it's like to kill a person you love. Only through her unusual confession can Zoe hope to atone for her mistakes that have torn lives apart, and work to put her own life back together again.

Rising literary star Annabel Pitcher pens a captivating second novel, rich with her distinctive balance between humor and heart, Annabel explores the themes of first love, guilt, grief, introducing a character with a witty voice and true emotional resonance.
My Review:
 KETCHUP CLOUDS was a very interesting story. Zoe, after killing a young teenage boy, is suffering from such guilt and remorse that she just has to tell someone. She goes online and finds a website for ''death row inmates'' and chooses Stuart Harris who is slated to die from lethal injection for murdering his wife.

Using the ficticious name of Zoe, she begins writing a series of letters to Mr. Harris, slowly building up to the day she killed the boy in the hope it will assuage her guilt. Inbetween she is having a lot to contend with between her schoolwork, her father losing his job, her parents fighting and arguing all the time, and coping with her deaf sister whom she loves to death.

Zoe not only falls in the love with the boy she killed, Max but also his brother Aaron. She ends up killing Max but does she still end up with Aaron in the end?

And she goes on a campaign of writing to a Nun to try and get Mr. Harris's date for death of May 1st stopped. Is she successful in that endeavour?

A really well-written story, very interesting and well-done! Highly recommended