Like the main character in du Maurier’s classic REBECCA, the narrator of this book remains unnamed. He’s a lonely, thoughtful teenage boy with a distant, self-involved father and a mother known as a “professional incompetent.”  

Enter Anna – who prefers to be called Anastasia.  Goth, unsocial, but extremely bright and creative, Anna spends her free time writing obituaries for every resident of the town.  Her creative, mysterious packages and postcards show how intelligent and unique she is, and the narrator is spellbound.   

Anna breaths new life into his routine, mundane perspective, and their improbable romance begins to bloom.  Until a week before Valentine’s Day, when Anna mysteriously disappears, her dress found near a hole on the icy lake the only trace left behind.   

Notes and messages seemingly from Anna turn up for some time afterwards, but leave no clues to Anna’s ultimate ending.  Was she a suicide, a victim, a runaway?  The narrator explores all possibilities as he scours over the months he and Anna spent together before her disappearance, and as he tries to reconstruct his life after she’s gone.  

Creepy, fascinating, bizarre, and totally compelling.  Classified as a young adult book because the primary characters are teenagers, I think the underlying story is deep enough to entrance any adult, too.  I highly recommend reading AS SIMPLE AS SNOW… and then help me figure out all of the answers to the mysteries!