What's up, Everyone?
So many of my most anticipated releases of the fall have come out. I am currently binge reading a whole stack of them. Therefore, you can expect a lot of big name reviews in the upcoming weeks. Also, I probably should be studying for midterms (because mine are coming up in the next two weeks), but instead I am reading. I also went to the library to pick up a hold yesterday and I told myself that I wouldn't look around and get anything else. Then I saw Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor on the shelf and I lost all resolve. Do I have time to read it? Nope. Did I get it and have no shame? You betcha.
Anywho, I recently got Genuine Fraud from the library. I was stoked. I put this book on hold months ago and it has been one of my most anticipated releases for this fall since it there was news that E.Lockhart was writing a new book. I loved We Were Liars. I binge read it until 3 am on a school night and was genuinely shook by the ending. Therefore, I had very high hopes for Genuine Fraud. It had mystery. It had intrigue. It promised murder, friendship, and two BA female protagonists. I was sold. Then I read it.
Genuine Fraud was not a bad book by any means. It just didn't sweep me off of my feet in the way that I wanted it too. However, there are some pros to this book: 1. There is an unreliable narrator, which I love. We don't see them often in YA books and it takes a lot of skill to write one well. So round of applause for E.Lockhart. 2. I loved the format that Genuine Fraud is written in. I think that the backward writing style highlighted Lockhart's ability to craft a detailed story and withhold information until it was absolutely necessary. I also thought that it was fun to have information revealed and have it not make any sense until earlier in the timeline. 3. I liked how short it was. I am a super fan of short books and applaud authors who can condense their stories. 4. I am a general fan of E.Lockhart's writing style. I liked it more in We Were Liars, but I did enjoy her writing in Genuine Fraud. I like how she drops information and catches the reader off guard. She also plays with the tone of the book really well, which I appreciated. However, I think that there were more cons than pros to this book. 1.My biggest problem with the book was that I predicted what was going to happen after 20% of the book. Once it was established that Jule was an unreliable narrator, my brain went on a spree trying to figure out what happened. Anything was free game. 2. This book felt very slow. Even though there is a lot going on and the story is rather intriguing, I felt like I had a hard time getting into Genuine Fraud. I also thought that, even during the action scenes, everything just felt weirdly low. 3. I didn't connect with any of the characters. Jule was interesting to a certain extent, mostly because she was our narrator and wasn't as annoying as the rest of Imogen's friends. Forest, Brooke, and Imogen got on my nerves. The only characters that I liked were Imogen's parents and Paolo because they were adorable. I think that this also hindered by ability absorb the messages of Genuine Fraud. I have seen a lot of awesome quotes from this book in its marketing. For instance, “Do you think a person is as bad as her worst actions?" Another one I liked was "She became the kind of women it would be a great mistake to underestimate." Even though these quotes sound awesome, and there were a lot of good one liners in the book, I wasn't inspired by their messages. None of them stuck with me while I was reading and I think that had a lot to do with the fact that I couldn't connect to any of the characters who were saying them. 4. The story is very unrealistic. I know, it really isn't meant to be realistic. I get that. However, I highly doubt that Imogen's mother would have randomly started talking to a girl that her daughter went to school with a long time ago (and someone who her daughter wasn't close friends with) and immediately been like, "can you come to our apartment? I want to talk to you about (basically) stalking my daughter and sending us updates." This was more unbelievable than anything that Jule did. 5. There were a couple of problematic lines. One was the "hetero masculine superhero" or alternative ways of saying "a ripped white dude". It was humorous the first time around, but the more she used it the more annoyed I got with it. The other one was "feminist yet feminine". The way this phrase is written implies that those who are feminine are not feminists, or that you can't be feminine and feminist. I get the gist of what she is saying, but I think that this comparison was poorly done and a little off-putting.
Ultimately, this book was just meh. If I didn't have to return it to the library tomorrow, I don't think that I would have continued to read it after I had such a hard time getting into it. It is frustrating, because I really wanted to love this book and I didn't. But it also wasn't a bad book.
It you have read Genuine Fraud, let me know what you think of it in the comments of my blog or on Twitter @Officalsamepage. I would love to know!
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars -Jaime