Review of The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu
Genres: Contemporary
Pages: 336
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Release Date: 08/03/2018
"Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party.
But did you know Alice was sexting Brandon when he crashed his car?
It's true. Ask ANYBODY."
Rumour has it that Alice Franklin is a slut. It's written all over the 'slut stall' in the girls' bathroom at Healy High for everyone to see. And after star quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car accident, the rumours start to spiral out of control.
In this remarkable novel, four Healy High students - the party girl, the car accident survivor, the ex best friend and the boy next door - tell all they know.
But exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there's only one person to ask: Alice herself.
The clear purpose of this book was to explore stereotypes - the slut, the popular girl, the girl who wants to fit in and the nerd. It's done pretty well but I did find myself wishing that we'd have had the whole book from Alice and Kurt, while the rest just really lived up to their stereotypes. I often found myself getting Elaine and Kelsie mixed up, to be honest.
Alice and Kurt's relationship was lovely and if the author had chosen to stick with these two characters I genuinely think this story could have been Anna And The French Kiss levels of amazing. It was a really simple, high school relationship, starting off with him teaching her math, finding her a rare Christmas present that he knew she would love, getting drunk with her when she was upset. I really needed more of it.
The Truth About Alice was a completely new experience for me because I've never read an entire book only to come away with zero feelings about it, aside from Alice and Kurt's relationship. I should've cared about Brandon's death but I didn't come away feeling like he was a huge loss to the world. I spent most of my time stuck on why Alice had chosen to suddenly start wearing this huge jumper everyone was talking about.
Maybe I'm just too old for this book. I am ten years older than it's audience and maybe American teenagers can really relate to this story. The themes in the story didn't go too over the top like other books like 13 Reasons Why did, which was a welcome change and themes like abortion and death were handled pretty well too.
One reason why I may have had trouble connecting was the choice to tell instead of show. Every character just told us what happened from their perspective, so at no point did I feel like I was there, feeling the same things. I do feel somewhat comforted that I wasn't the only reviewer to experience this problem.
Book received free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This is one of my faves!! Too bad it didn't connect with you like it did with me :( I was in an epic reading slump when I picked it up and just SUCKED IN. It made me so happy that I was wanting to read!! I really loved Alice and Kent's relationship, and I was happy that they didn't get overly dramatic about it.
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