Wendy Hinbest

Masquerade of Lies was an intriguing young adult thriller novel that kept me interested and invested right through to the end. While there were a few issues I had with this novel, namely to do with its believability and realism, the overall opinion I have of this book is that it's brimming with the potential to be an absolute hit.

The story follows Hanna, a young woman with a history of mental illness starting afresh in a new town and school. The inclusion of dramatic side characters kept this story interesting and helped to alleviate the much darker, and unexpected depths, this story took. I had not been expecting so many dark themes in this book, which were more often than not just shoved upon the reader with very little prior warning. While this had a shock and impact factor, it did have a hint of manipulation toward the reader. Some dark events should be presented as a shocking twist but certainly not all of them and definitely not without some prior warning in the synopsis. As is, this book has a very high potential to trigger people unexpectedly on some really dark themes. While some elements seemed necessary a few felt like a cheap play for impact only and their repercussions, which should have been severe, were merely glossed over.

The characters in this story were the main event. I had expected an action-packed high school drama book and this was delivered however, not in the manner I had been expecting. Everything was filtered through the characters to the extent that it felt more character driven than anything else.

The drama within the book reminded me a little of the Vampire Diaries. Not in fantastical elements but in the way the teens seemed overly mature, yet continued to make incredibly immature decisions. While this can be mostly believable in some cases, such as in Vampire Diaries, there needs to be a significant portion of the writing devoted to developing the characters and setting to accomodate such a heavy plot in a young group of people. That wasn't entirely the case in this novel.

Instead, Masquerade of Lies proceeded to 'show not tell' the story, effectively making the teen drama come across as overdone and highly immature. More development of setting and characters to meet the darker themes of this book was necessary. Alternatively, an older age group and setting would have been more appropriate, such as making this a New Adult thriller as opposed to a young adult.

Overall, despite the few issues I had with this novel, the story was still very interesting and I read this all in one sitting. I truly mean it when I say this book has some serious potential. A few of the plot twists and developments were brilliant. They had the making of an exceptionally good book but unfortunately a bit more work was required in setting and development of character to achieve that status. With some polishing this book could be 5 stars!… (plus d'informations)

I had really high hopes for this book but I was sadly disappointed. I found the situations the teenagers ended up in to be unbelievable and the relationships unrealistic. The one redeeming quality was that I didn't know for sure who the killer was until the end. I suspected the killer, but then I was second guessing my suspicions which, to me is the mark of a good suspense author. However, I feel that books like this are really doing a dis-service to the YA's who read them. This particular brand of book presents adults as being too stupid to figure out what is really going on and so teenagers should not trust their parents, teachers, or even the police with the truth. Apparently, teenagers are the only ones smart enough to catch a killer. Really? I know some smart teens, but let's be honest, they just don't have the life experiences necessary to handle mature adult situations without some kind of guidance from (gasp) a mature adult. If the main character didn't lie to her mom ever single time they had a conversation then maybe she wouldn't have ended up in such horrible situations. Not to mention, this book was just like every other YA murder mystery.

*I was given a free copy from Librarything in exchange for my honest review.*… (plus d'informations)