Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart | ARC Review

Title: Genuine Fraud

Author: E. Lockhart

Series: N/A

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery/Thriller, Contemporary

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication date: September 5th, 2017

Pages: 272

My rating:

The story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.

Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.

Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.

An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.

A bad romance, or maybe three.

Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.

A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.

A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.

“Jule knew she didn’t look like those women. She would never look like those women. But she was everything those heroes were, and in some ways, she was more.”

Bear with me because this is going to be a pretty odd and strange review, because, even though I’ve finished the book a few days ago, I still haven’t gathered completely all my thoughts about it. Did I like it? Yes. Was I expecting more from it? Totally.

I have to say before I start rambling about the story that it was soo fast and I found it perfect, because as you may or may not I’m in a huge reading slump where I can’t read basically anything. So I take what I can, guys. And this was a very fast paced, quick and easy (well, maybe not exactly “easy”) read. And sometimes that’s exactly what I need.

“We’re not friends, Ms. Williams. You’re lying to me half the time, and I’m lying to you all the time.”

Now I have very mixed feelings about this book. The whole concept and the story itself was pretty dark and mysterious and totally right out my alley, and I adored the premise and the way the story is told. You started in the present and then moved backwards so you know more about our main character and her whole story, and I found that such an interesting way to tell a story that it actually really intrigued me. I think this was the first book I’ve read written that way, so yeah, that’s what first caught my attention.

However the writing was a bit off to me. You know that I’m not usually pointy with writing styles, and hardly mentioned it in my reviews, but I feel the need to do so in this one, because the writing or how the main character’s point of view made me not connect with the characters as much as I would have wanted to. And due to the morals of the story and how potentially dark it was, that’s something quite important, because otherwise you’re just simply going to hate the characters.

And oh, those characters! I still don’t know if I hate them or not. Like I mentioned before, I think I need to re-read it to gather how I feel about the whole thing. I liked Jule as a main character. I found her really interesting and emotionally damaged, but still cold and fierce, and a very unreliable narrator. I didn’t connect with her as much as I hoped, but I still enjoyed reading from her point of view, even though in my opinion there were a few open threads.

“Mysteries perpetuate the status quo. Everything always wraps up at the end. Order is restored. But order doesn’t really exist, right? It’s an artificial construct.”

Another thing that was pretty important in the story is the whole mystery and what happened before that now the main character is running away from. That’s what the whole novel is about, and honestly it was a bit predictable and not hard to figured out. I knew it from the very beginning, and I found it a bit more easy than in We Were Liars. Again, I ALWAYS know (or mostly always) these types of bombs, so it’s usually a bit hard for me to get shocked, but I still wanted to point that detail out.

So overall, I did enjoy the story and had a good time reading it, despite the writing being a bit off and made me not feel that attached to the characters. It wasn’t the best story ever, but quite a unique and morally dark one.

I recieved an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This doesn’t change my opinion whatsoever. All thoughts are my own.