The book, As Simple As Snow, by Gregory Galloway is anything but simple. The book is written in a fiction style, but has a very realistic touch twisted into the binding. It is a haunting mystery that will leave you with many unanswered questions in the end. The book itself will always keep you reading in suspense and make you want to perpetually know more then it conveys.

The book is told from a teenage boy’s perspective, whose name remains unknown throughout the story. He soon comes to befriend a girl named Anastasia, who is quirky, dark, and very different from other people. She is a person of her own. She spends her evenings writing obituaries, reading books, and listening to music. They categorize her in the “Marilyn Manson” group at school.
“She came out of the house wearing a pair of headphones over her short, straight blond hair, the cord snaked into the pocket of a short black jacket. It was the kind of jacket someone would pump gas in, worn on a hot, humid day when it was, with complete certainty, the only jacket being worn in town. Under the jacket she has a black shirt, which, I found out later was long-sleeved. She never wore short sleeves. She was also wearing a pair of jeans and heavy boots---black. She wore thick black eyeliner and a black expression.”
The setting varies from high school hallways, Anna’s basement, and the cold-hearted river. These settings are all very important in the end of the story, so be sure to pay close attention.

This tale also has a teenage love story entangled into its pages with Anna and a boy. The couple hangs out daily even though he knows being seen with her doesn’t help his image. He even becomes so obsessed with her that he duplicates the wall in her bedroom on his own wall. They continue this love story until one day Anna comes up missing, missing on a cold winter day and nothing to be found but a hole in the river with her dress laying nearby. The search for her body goes on for days; the codes that appear randomly give the boy audacity to search for her on his own time.
There is a very strong sense of purpose in life that grows stronger from page to page, a sense of obtaining an adults outlook on life when you are actually just a mere adolescent. The book is among its own in the reading world, due to it being sewn with secret codes, song lists, and quotes from various authors of Anna’s reading choices. This book is a suspense filled, mysterious packed novel that just about any person would be pulled into from the first paragraph of reading. It is a book that will keep you on your feet at all times, and will draw you on to read until the very end. So go and visit your library or the nearby bookstore today and pick up a copy of the 2006 Alex Award book, As Simple As Snow, written by Gregory Galloway.