Book review: You Have Seven Messages by Stewart Lewis (YA)

It's been a year since Luna's mother, a fashion model wife of a successful film director, was killed by a taxi in NYC. When cleaning out her mother's old studio, Luna finds her mom's cell phone--fully charged and with seven unheard messages. As Luna listens to each one, she learns much more about her mother's life and death than she imagined. With the help of her neighbor Oliver, Luna searches for the truth of what really happened that night.

I loved the premise of this book. What would you do if you found unheard messages on your dead mother's phone? Would you listen? What if you learned something you didn't want to know? Unfortunately, the novel itself is a bit bumpy. Luna is a precocious, wealthy teen living in Manhattan and this novel reads more like a fairy tale than a sleuthing drama. Everything seems to fall into Luna's lap so easily--a gallery show after she starts taking photographs, the boy she likes, hanging out with Drew Barrymore. Luna does show growth through the novel, and there are some really beautiful moments as she's dealing with the grief of losing her mom and figuring out who she is as a person. I wish both she and her brother, Tile, had more depth, but overall this was an enjoyable read.