Review: The Truth About Alice

Title: The Truth About Alice

Author: Jennifer Mathieu

Genre: Young Adult

Published: June 3, 2014

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book told by five people, Elaine, Kurt, Kelsie, Josh and Alice. They all told their version of what they knew about Alice and her life, how she became the town's outcast.The town believed Alice was responsible for Brandon, the local football star's, death.

My biggest problem with the story was all the drinking. The story is about high school students and yes we all know they are going to drink. My problem was the parents. There was no discouragement. The parents of these teenagers provided the beer. They didn't caution their children to not drink. When one of the parents did talk about it she told her child to make sure no one who had been drinking drove afterwards. Good advice that, but really don't most parents discourage their children from drinking?

The first narrator was Elaine. She was a good character for a mean girl. She embraced who she was and made no apologies for what she did. Despite being the stereotypical popular girl she was okay. At one point she had a really good break through moment. Honestly one of the best scenes in the book.

Kelsie came next. Here was a character I just couldn't relate to. I was never in the popular crowd. Even in high school it wasn't something that was important to me. This was her main motivation. She did everything she thought was required to be apart of the in crowd. In the end she was just a terrible person.

Josh did not have a lot of depth to his character. His most defining characteristic was being Brandon's best friend. He didn't really have any motivations for what he did or said in the book. Other than being a narrator he was just kind of there.

Kurt. I liked Kurt. Really there should be more people in the world like him. He was the best part of the story.

Alice. We didn't get her side of things until the last chapter, because of this her character wasn't as fleshed out as she could have been. Maybe if we had gotten more chapters from her perspective we would have seen more of her depth. I did like how she handled all the crap everyone was shovelling on top of her. I was a little disappointed there wasn't more of a resolution for Alice at the end of the story.

Overall I gave this book 3 stars out of 5.