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Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now

320 Pages

Synopsis: Bad girls get it done.

Sasha’s all-time favorite person is her best friend Xavier. He’s smart, funny, and strange. He’s not just nice but kind. He’s endlessly forgiving, even when maybe he shouldn’t be.

So when Xavier lets his ex, Ivy, slither her way back into his life, Sasha knows she needs to protect him. And not just because she can’t stop thinking about the night she and Xavier shared a rum-soaked kiss. No, it’s because Ivy is poisonous. The last time they were together, Ivy cheated on Xavier and he just barely survived.

Sasha has a plan: pose online as a guy to seduce Ivy, proving that cheaters never change. But she soon learns to be careful who you pretend to be—because you can never truly know the darkness inside of someone. Including yourself.

Bad Girls With Perfect Faces is a solid mystery/ thriller that I think will have wide appeal. It’s dark, gritty and compelling, and although I had some trouble connecting with the characters, the plot kept me reading .

The narrative is told from multiple POVs and jumps between first, second, and third person. Ivy is your stereotypical mean girl, who really has nothing that makes her stand out from similar characters in other YA books. Xavier is an affable guy, but rather bland and completely clueless. Sasha is the most interesting character and I appreciated her complexity. She’s impulsive and a bit obsessive when it comes to her feeling about Xavier, yet there’s no doubt that she genuinely cares about him and wants to protect him.

The plot itself is dark and twisty, and went places I did not expect it to go. There’s plenty of twists and turns and while there was some foreshadowing as to the big revelation, the journey getting to that point was still an intriguing one.

Bad Girls With Pretty Faces is the first book I’ve read by Lynn Weingarten, and while I wish the characters had been developed a little more, I thought the story itself was original and entertaining. I think this would appeal to a wide audience. I would however recommend it to older teens as this covers sexual situations, drugs, alcohol and self-harm. I’m definitely planning on checking out future books by this author.