Reconstructing Amelia
Kate is in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter now. But Kate's stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it's already too late for Amelia. And for Kate. An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that is the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn't jump. The novel is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. But, most of all, it's the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn't save.
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Single-mom lawyer Kate Baron is told her teenage daughter Amelia has jumped off her elite Brooklyn school's roof. Then Kate gets an anonymous text that says Amelia did not jump, and starts going through her life.
A film adaptation has been in development since 2013 with Nicole Kidman attached to produce. As of 2025, no formal adaptation has been released.
Yes. Reconstructing Amelia is a psychological thriller that pieces together a teenage girl's death through emails, texts, and social media posts. It was a New York Times bestseller and is widely cited as a defining domestic-thriller of the early 2010s.
Reconstructing Amelia was written by Kimberly McCreight, published in 2013 by Simon & Schuster, Limited.
Reconstructing Amelia is 400 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Reconstructing Amelia takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Reconstructing Amelia is a standalone novel by Kimberly McCreight, not part of a series.
Reconstructing Amelia is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
