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simsarah79's review against another edition
2.0
The writing: compelling but it was the only thing that ultimately kept me turning pages. I don't know. I love dark fiction. Especially compared to the usual 'warm hearted' crap. but this one something was a little off. I agree with some of the other reviews saying that there were sub-stories that didn't seem to fit in and the ending-yeah it was a surprise but something was off about it, if not disappointing. So overall it was okay. I was equally bored and just interested enough to finish it. It was a quick read.
orangeoverload's review against another edition
1.0
I really expected more from this book. The blurb really gripped me and i thought it was going to be really intriguing and different, but in the end, there was no real plot; it ended really abruptly; and it didn't live up to my expectations. The ending with the 3 girls really made me feel uncomfortable, i wanted to stop reading because it felt wrong. I've never felt this way about a book before, i really don't recommend reading it because it'll just be a waste of your time.
moreadsbooks's review against another edition
1.0
This book sucks. Coe manages some pretty good writing as she tells the achingly sad stories of Gemma and Pauline, two girls in the same class at school who happen to each have awful mothers. Gemma's favorite child actress is Lallie, who is shooting a Lifetime-style movie about pedophilia, part of which takes place in their school over the summer. This leads to lazy interludes with an older actress on the movie set, Lallie's agent, and a terrible caricature of a Hollywood producer, a woman named Quentin who develops an inexplicable crush on some guy & pines for Quaaludes all the time. If you can manage to bear these bits, there's some really lovely writing about the two girls - until the inexplicable denouement, wherein Gemma and Pauline brutally torture and murder a black classmate named Cynthia.
I finished this book at midnight, which is whoa-late at night for me anyway, and didn't have the heart or energy to read something else to take the taste of this murder out of my mouth. So I lay in bed for another hour or so, thinking about Cynthia, especially in the context of where the girls meet her; in the laundromat, laughing and talking with her mom, showing more life than they'd ever seen from her at school. So what is the point of this? Good literature gives you characters that you think about long after the book is done, but with all its other clumsy problems, this isn't good literature. Cynthia's death made me sick to my stomach. It smacks of cheap, shitty sensationalism, of an author who couldn't think of how to end her book properly, so she brought around a tangential character to revel in torture & try to inject some shock value. Everyone deserves better than this out of the books they read.
I finished this book at midnight, which is whoa-late at night for me anyway, and didn't have the heart or energy to read something else to take the taste of this murder out of my mouth. So I lay in bed for another hour or so, thinking about Cynthia, especially in the context of where the girls meet her; in the laundromat, laughing and talking with her mom, showing more life than they'd ever seen from her at school. So what is the point of this? Good literature gives you characters that you think about long after the book is done, but with all its other clumsy problems, this isn't good literature. Cynthia's death made me sick to my stomach. It smacks of cheap, shitty sensationalism, of an author who couldn't think of how to end her book properly, so she brought around a tangential character to revel in torture & try to inject some shock value. Everyone deserves better than this out of the books they read.
amyboughner's review against another edition
2.0
Nothing happened for a long time and when something did happen it didn't make any sense at all
ceri_reads's review
2.0
This book had plenty of promise but I found it a bit of a let down. The book focuses on 3, very different young girls. Some characters of the book really had no need to be there, it seemed like they were there just to make up the pages. The ending was a bit of a disturbing read but that didn't make up for this lacklustre book.