Genuine Fraud by E Lockhart

          This is a very hard book to review because to do so in my normal manner would give away major plot points and nobody wants that.  I think it says it all when I will admit to not just reading this book but devouring it in one sitting - it even made it on a bathroom break where I risked limb, if not life, in reading goig upstairs and down.

Told from the perspective of Jule West Williams it is a curious hybrid of first person narrative and third person perspective and is engagingly written.  It is the tale of how she came to be how she is and how she has decided on who she is.  Ms Lockhart weaves an exceptionally good tale and one that means you really do have to turn the next page.

There is so much I want to say about the various characters in this book Jule, Imogen and the minor players of Dominico, Brooke, Paolo and Forrest but I simply can't.  For a slim volume it packs a lot of punch and I am thankful that it was not diluted by the author being pushed to increase the word count at the expense of the tale.

From the sample pages this is not the book I was anticipating reading.  It is so much more and took a twist right from the second chapter that I genuinely did not expect.  Marketed as a YA novel it definitely doesn't read that way and is written in a way that is accessible to people like myself that haven't been eligible for the YA tag for 30 some years.

I did receive this book as a freebie but that has not coloured my judgement in this, admittedly glowing and marginally sycophantic review.  This is taut storytelling at its best and has been crafted not thrown together to meet a deadline.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
       
**Review originally published September 3rd, 2017**