Review: Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't quite sure how to rate this at first.  I ended up giving it 3 stars.  I quite enjoyed it. I really liked the trip this took me on, but I struggled with the ending. It didn't give me the closure I wanted. I'm not a fan of open endings. I swapped back and forth between the ebook and the audiobook. Both were very good. I liked the writing style and I will be checking out more of Lockhart's work in the future.

You can definitely tell that this was very much inspired by The Talented Mr. Ripley, the author mentions this in her note at the end. I've only ever seen the movie.

This isn't a suspenseful kind of thriller, I kind of figured out what happened early on and the unconventional timeline kind of guides you to figure out what is going on early on. Because you jump back and forth between present day, before, and somewhere in the middle of the mystery you find out what happens and then are left sorting out the aftermath as well as some things that happened even beforehand. I liked the journey this took me on, it was kind of wild, but I was kind of left scratching my head at the end.

You follow Jule, our unreliable narrator, from the present day and you jump around until you come full circle and end up back in the present. Jule hasn't had a great life, but you are never quite sure if what she is telling you actually happened or if it is one of the stories and personas she's concocted as part of her survival mechanism. Jule spends most of her time with her friend Imogen, who have formed a bond over being orphans. Neither of them are very likeable, none of the characters are, but they are both very complex as is their friendship. I liked getting to know them even if I ended up not liking either of them in the end.

I'm using this to fulfil the prompt of a book with unusual chapter headings as they start at 18 and go backwards.  There are also breaks in the book that look like they should be chapters but they are just breaks within the chapters.  The chapters appear like the book is told backwards, but the timeline is non-linear. 

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