AUTHOR: Katie Alender
PUBLISHED: September 2013
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Mystery, Paranormal
PREMISE: A girl travels to Paris just as people are being beheaded by a serial killer.
MY REVIEW: I confess, I was very disappointed in this one. I had read the Bad Girls Don't Die series and really enjoyed it. It was silly, yes, but it was sort of a self-aware silly that had some great social commentary squeezed into there as well. So I was expecting more of the same here.
Unfortunately...the author went a different route then expected and while sometimes that can be a good thing (such as The Dark Unwinding series), in this case...it was not. It was more of a disappointment. From the cover/summary I was expecting a awesome mystery about Marie Antoinette who goes around beheading people. Instead, this is more about Colette and her annoying friends. Which, okay. I could get behind a book saying being popular isn't everything under the sun. But this one did it in a particularly condescending way. Especially where Hannah was concerned. God, what a two-dimensional character Hannah was. Literally she was just there for the reader to hate on. She had no real use whatsoever other then to say "don't be like this girls! Being like this is bad!"
Then there's the fact that, Colette is just plain unlikable. Even after she gets the whole "lesson about popularity" thing. Then there's the apologetic attitude towards Marie Antoinette herself which drives me nutty. Yes, Marie was handed a raw deal politically (she didn't exactly ASK to be queen of France). No, she wasn't AS bad as people said. But...she was still bad. She still was responsible for a lot of crap. To wave away all she did and say the peasants were just being unfair about her and using her as a scapegoat...um no. That shows a complete lack of understanding about what was going on during that time period. Yeah, sorry, the peasants had every right to revolt and be mad at her. I may not be into the painting Marie as a heartless villain thing that history likes to do, but I'm also not into the excusing all the bad stuff because people were "unfair" to her thing that Marie sympathizers like to do either. This book did that a LOT and I could tell that was mostly author opinion and not actual use of facts/research/character opinion.
There were some good things about it. The mystery was entertaining. The descriptions of Paris were nice. I liked Audrey. But this ultimately wound up being not as awesome as it could have of been.
WHO SHOULD READ: Katie Alender fans
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five could have been better sighs
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