Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Review: Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

Dangerous Girls

Author: Abigail Haas
Release: July 16th 2013
Genre: Contemporary, Crime, Mystery, YA
Companion novel: Dangerous Boys


Plot:

It's Spring Break of senior year. Anna, her boyfriend Tate, her best friend Elise, and a few other close friends are off to a debaucherous trip to Aruba that promises to be the time of their lives. But when Elise is found brutally murdered, Anna finds herself trapped in a country not her own, fighting against vile and contemptuous accusations. 

As Anna sets out to find her friend's killer; she discovers hard truths about her friendships, the slippery nature of truth, and the ache of young love.

As she awaits the judge's decree, it becomes clear that everyone around her thinks she is not just guilty, but dangerous. When the truth comes out, it is more shocking than one could ever imagine...

Review:

Well, that was ... interesting, I guess. Or, actually — no, it wasn't. It really, really wasn't. 386 pages of it were quite boring, to be honest.

I'm really iffy about what to rate this, so I think I'll withhold a rating as of now and think about it some more. I might, however, end up just not rating it at all, for the rest of time; I'm so undecided about this. 

You see, I really loved the twist at the ending — multiple times throughout the novel I second guessed myself and mulled the possibility over, because I was really knocking myself out thinking of all possible culprits, since many of my friends who have read this told me that the ending is a complete mind-fuck. So, you see, I wasn't totally surprised per se, because somewhere in the back of my head I expected this, but I was ... very pleased, I guess you could say. Because Haas took a risk with her novel, she made it unique because of that ending and I really admired and respected that.

Still, the fact that the ending was magnificent in a way didn't change how everything before the reveal of the culprit was handled. Which was, let me be honest, dull, dull, boring and let's not forget lame. I'll admit that some scenes and flashbacks piqued my interest for some time there, but mostly, I felt extremely detached from the whole story. The flashbacks usually ripped the reader from the present in a violent way, disrupting the whole flow of the story and were even really unnecessary at times. The present was uneventful to say the least, I mean the trial scenes were interesting at first but soon grew tedious as well, it was all a big blob of "meh" after about 20% in.

The characters weren't fleshed out either; I loved how the friendship/relationship between Elise and Anna was portrayed and that it was kind of a double edged sword; I also appreciated the fact that Elise wasn't colored in as this perfect doll who has been wronged, who's the epitome of the innocent victim, but instead, she was indeed kind of a bitch in life. However, other than that, I can't really say a lot of positive things about the cast of characters, and the other dynamics. The whole plot revolved about teenagers who were very immature and stupid, who did extremely dumb shit over tiny petty things just because. It was really aggravating sometimes, but hey, whatever. 

In the end, I just ... I don't know, man. I liked the big reveal, but other than that, I didn't really like anything else.

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