Bad Girls with Perfect Faces

September 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Sasha is sick of watching Ivy break Xavier's heart again and again, especially because her feelings for him have developed beyond friendship. So when Xavier and Ivy get back together, Sasha decides to take matters into her own hands. She knows that Ivy has cheated on Xavier in the past and she will cheat on him again. Sasha poses as a guy online and starts a flirtation with Ivy to prove to Xavier how bad she is for him. But things do not go as planned; they go horribly, horribly wrong. The story of Xavier, Sasha, and Ivy is told in multiple points of view. Sasha narrates her side of things in first person, while Xavier's chapters are told in third person. There is a third, mysterious first-person narrator, as well as text conversations between Ivy and Jake (Sasha's made-up persona). Together these threads weave a dark, twisted tale of betrayal and lies. Readers will be in high suspense as the juicy details of the drama escalate. Weingarten plays with the good girl/bad girl dichotomy in the female main characters, while Xavier is portrayed as helpless pawn between two desperate young women. The ending will have teens going back to reread everything that happened through new eyes. Hand this psychological thriller to fans of unreliable narrators and those looking for Gone Girl for teens. VERDICT An intoxicating page-turner, this one is sure to be popular.-Allison McLean, Elkhart Public Library, IN

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
A love triangle takes a turn for the dark. There never seems to be a good time for Sasha to tell her best friend, Xavier, that she is desperately in love with him--not while he's depressed after Ivy dumps him, not when Ivy decides she wants him back, not even when Sasha comes up with a beastly plan to entrap Ivy into revealing her selfish and cheating ways. Ivy is "a tornado, unpredictable and cracklingly alive." Sasha tells herself that she has Xavier's best intentions at heart when she uploads a picture of a hot guy with a "muscular bicep" and sends Ivy an Instagram follow request. Ivy takes the bait and starts a text flirtation, but she continues to lure Xavier deeper into a naughty relationship. "Come to my house," she tells him. "I promise we won't get caught." Sasha goes to extreme lengths to free Xavier from Ivy, and these pretty girls create some very ugly situations. Weingarten draws provocative characters with searingly sharp writing, but underneath the stylishness, the plot twists are abrupt and may leave readers with vertigo. The absence of specific racial or ethnic markers implies a white default. A teen love story that flits through a titillating social scene and wanders into a murky moral swamp. (Fiction. 14-18)

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