Bad Girls with Perfect Faces, by Lynn Weingarten ~ 3.5 Stars

Tags

Mystery, Social Issues, Suspense, Teen relationships, YA Fiction

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.

 

Little Monsters, by Kara Thomas ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Dysfunctional Families, Mysteries, Teen relationships, Thrillers, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Release Date: June 25th, 2017

336 Pages

Synopsis: Kacey is the new girl in Broken Falls. When she moved in with her father, she stepped into a brand-new life.  A life with a stepbrother, stepmother, and strangest of all, an adoring younger half sister.

Kacey’s new life is eerily charming compared with the wild highs and lows of the old one she lived with her volatile mother. And everyone is so nice in Broken Falls–she’s even been welcomed into a tight new circle of friends. Bailey and Jade invite her to do everything with them.

Which is why it’s so odd when they start acting distant. And when they don’t invite her to the biggest party of the year, it doesn’t exactly feel like an accident.

But Kacey will never be able to ask, because Bailey never makes it home from that party. Suddenly, Broken Falls doesn’t seem so welcoming after all–especially once everyone starts looking to the new girl for answers.

Kacey is about to learn some very important lessons: Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes when the you’re the new girl, you shouldn’t trust anyone.

Little Monsters has been one of the more hotly anticipated books of 2017, and I’m happy to say that it more than lives up to the hype. 

I love stories about the darker layers of the human psyche, especially in regards to teens. It would have been easy to turn this into a more horror/thrillerish ripoff of Mean Girls, but Kara Thomas has made her characters fascinating if not always likable. Kacey herself, is a sketchy character. There were times when I really liked her, especially during her interactions with her stepbrother and half sister, and other times, I had doubts in her innocence, even though she seemed determined to discover what happened to Bailey. The other characters are equally well written. I especially loved Bailey’s journal entries, which showed how much someone can change in a fairly short amount of time. Their inclusion gives the already suspenseful story an additional creepy and menacing layer. 

The story itself moves along at a steady pace and because I was so invested in the characters I finished it in two sittings. There are a lot of red herrings, so I didn’t really guess who was behind Bailey’s disappearance until right before the big reveal. The only reason why I didn’t give this a perfect 5 is because I thought the supernatural plot device of the “Red Lady” was interesting, but ultimately never went anywhere. 

In the end, I have to agree with the many other reviewers who have commented that Little Monsters is a perfect book for fans of Pretty Little Liars. It’s an enjoyable, twisty mystery and thriller that will keep you guessing right up until the end!