Publication date: October 31 2017
Published by: Simon Pulse
Genre: New Adult, Contemporary, Dark, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Crime, High School
Rating:
But Sasha’s plan goes sickeningly wrong. And she soon learns to be careful of who you pretend to be because you might be surprised by who you become…
This is one of my all over the place reviews, I apologise in advance 😬
I want to preface this by saying that I have been obsessed with teen true crime docus lately. After watching I love you, now die I was in shock, and in all honesty, terrified of the workings of the teenage mind. Also, binging Euphoria episodes didn't help 🙁
After watching these, I mentally went back to the 90s when I was a teenager and tried to remember if I was remotely the same, if I had similar thoughts and emotions and I just didn't express them so loudly.
While at first I emphatically denied being anything like "them", after mulling it over I actually remembered times when I too had dark thoughts, when I too was extremely lonely, when I too felt like shit. Unfortunately, this is what adolescence is: it universally sucks. And it mostly sucks because of other people, and the way they choose to treat you and see you as.
That was me in the 90s when I could count these people on one hand.
Now, you can take this handful of people and multiply them by a billion, because that is how many people have the right to have an opinion about you now and talk in any way they want about you.
The internet: what a marvel.
So when a 18 year old boy kills himself because his girlfriend texted him to do it, I can't help but wonder: what's next?
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What does that have to do with Bad Girls with Perfect Faces you ask. Something similar happens in this book when Ivy starts chatting with a guy named Jake who DMed her on Instagram, and who she's never met in person. Ivy starts to get very close to Jake, believing that he is the only one that gets her and really sees her. It is only after they agree to meet in person that things go horribly wrong.
Something I am 100% sure I would never do in my teens, or rather knew better than to do: meet a stranger in the woods.
I mean, it's common sense right? I don't want to victim blame or anything like that, but
1. how can you be sure this person you, a teenage girl, is talking to, is not a sexual predator??
2. how do you agree to meet him in person??
Where is this behaviour, this mentality stemming from? Kids are definitely way more educated in these matters now than I was back then, but they also seem to have this cavalier and daredevil attitude which we definitely didn't have. Can someone please explain it to me because I don't get it at all.
I am obviously not going to reveal any spoilers here, but I have to admit that I did not see any of the twists coming, so the mystery/suspense part was very compelling.
But what made this book so riveting, was its characters: Sasha, Xavier and Ivy.
Sasha and Xavier are best friends. Sasha is this no nonsense, sure of herself, but for some reason quite detached, girl and Xavier is this sweet, goofy guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. After Xavier gets back together with Ivy, who completely ruined him when she first dumbed him, Sasha is determined to do aaaanything to save her best friend from being hurt again, and finally tell him she's in love with him.
Ivy was a hateful girl, who enjoyed stringing people along and emotionally abusing them. She had no redeeming qualities whatsoever (none that I could see) and I was finding it very hard to understand why Xavier, this kind hearted guy, would ever be so in love with this girl. He said Ivy was so fearless and I guess that's what he loved about her. But Ivy was fearless because she had never faced any consequences for her actions. Xavier, and I guess all the other people in her life, always made excuses for her, justifying her actions as "Ivy being Ivy". They were all essentially enabling this deeply troubled teenage girl to be even more mean, more evil, to test people's limits and bring them to their breaking point.
So you'd think that Sasha trying everything to save her best friend from Ivy's clutches would make her the hero.
Not quite so.
Sasha is immensely jealous of Ivy. She often wonders why all the guys were into Ivy when she was so clearly vile and "not that attractive". She decides to create this fake Insta profile and DM Ivy to catch her in the act and then prove to Xavier that "See? She has been cheating with you all this time."
After the incident though, all that changes. Weingarten does an amazing job here, shifting 1st person narration to 2nd, showing how Sasha had to leave her body and become someone else in order to do what needs to be done and how, once it's done, she comes back to life in a sense with narration changing back to 1st. She is driven by such a deep love for Xavier, that is willing to do the unthinkable to save him. I loved Sasha and I think her and Ivy were the most interesting characters.
That being said, I found Xavier weak, especially for a guy who has two girls "fighting" over him. He never really showed any backbone in his relationship with both Ivy and Sasha, and he very willingly let himself be led throughout the whole book.
I would have also liked for Gwen to have a bigger presence in the book so the final twist could make more sense and have an even bigger impact.
Also, I think the CAPS in her narrative were pointless.
I loved the bleak, non HEA ending. After everything these kids did, it would completely ruin the book if everything ended up fine and dandy. They deserved an even worse ending if you ask me.
This is a dark, twisted story about an angry, confused girl who did a very bad thing. I am not sure if it's an appropriate read for pre teens, but what do I know? I read Carrie when I was 10.
These kinds of books are my jam, and I really really enjoyed this one. I have to say though, I am very surprised at the low ratings of Weingarten's other books. I wonder if it's because they are really that bad, or because YA readers had different expectations going in? I mean, I heard Bad Girls described as a love triangle and pff that can't be further from the truth. It's sad how many great books go unnoticed or negatively critiqued because of bad marketing.
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