Summary:
Who is Katherine Patterson? It is a question she hopes no one can answer. To erase her past, Katherine has moved to a new city, enrolled in a new school, and even changed her name. She's done the next best thing to disappearing altogether. Now, wary and alone, she seeks nothing more than anonymity. What she finds instead is the last thing she expected: a friend.
Even more unlikely, Katherine's new friend is the most popular and magnetic girl in school. Extroverted, gorgeous, flirtatious, and unpredictable, she is everything that Katherine is not and doesn’t want to be: the center of attention. Yet Alice's enthusiasm is infectious, her candor sometimes unsettling, and Katherine, in spite of her guarded caution, finds herself drawn into Alice's private circle.
But Alice has secrets, too—darker than anyone can begin to imagine. And when she lets her guard down at last, Katherine discovers the darkest of them all. For there will be no escaping the past for Katherine Patterson—only a descent into a trap far more sinister . . . and infinitely more seductive.
My thoughts:
You can tell right away that something horrible must have happened to Katherine for her to try to erase her past like this, but I would never have guessed just how bad it was. This book surprised me over and over again, because even when the chapters written from the future (or present I guess, if everything else happened in the past) gave away some things, we never knew when or how those things would happen.
Katherine is such a great main character. She's not perfect, she doesn't always know what to do, and she has some serious issues that she needs to deal with. It amazed me how someone can go through a life changing event like that and still be so naive afterwards, but it did make Katherine a more likable person. The other characters, and especially Alice, are all very well described. After finishing Beautiful Malice I felt like I knew every one of them personally, and I could not stop thinking about the plot for days and days after.
One of my favorite things about Beautiful Malice is that I knew something bad has happened, and I knew there was more bad things to come, and yet I couldn't stop reading. I cried out of frustration, happiness, anger and heartbreaking sadness, I cursed certain characters out loud more than once while cheering others on, yet ultimately the story came to it's own end. It was not the ending I wanted, but it was the only one that fit.
Katherine is such a great main character. She's not perfect, she doesn't always know what to do, and she has some serious issues that she needs to deal with. It amazed me how someone can go through a life changing event like that and still be so naive afterwards, but it did make Katherine a more likable person. The other characters, and especially Alice, are all very well described. After finishing Beautiful Malice I felt like I knew every one of them personally, and I could not stop thinking about the plot for days and days after.
One of my favorite things about Beautiful Malice is that I knew something bad has happened, and I knew there was more bad things to come, and yet I couldn't stop reading. I cried out of frustration, happiness, anger and heartbreaking sadness, I cursed certain characters out loud more than once while cheering others on, yet ultimately the story came to it's own end. It was not the ending I wanted, but it was the only one that fit.
The cover:
The eye on the cover totally creeps me out, which I guess matches the book pretty well.
My rating of this book:
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Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James
Published: July 13th 2010
Pages (hardcover): 272
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553808052 (ISBN13: 9780553808056)
Full disclosure: Checked out at my local library
This book can be purchased from a number of local retailers and online book stores such as Amazon or The Book Depository (I am not an affiliate of either). The latter store has free shipping to about 100 countries.
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