Review: Genuine Fraud

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are two vastly different interpretations one can make when walking away from this book, specifically regarding the ending. But clearly based upon my generous two star score, I chose to go with interpretation option A, which is the option that will look you dead in the eye and tell you that this book isn’t very good.

For starters, I didn’t love having to constantly stop and recalibrate my location in this narrative like a faulty GPS at the start of every chapter. I fully support a novel being told in reverse, and quite frankly that trope intrigues me in and of itself. But here it didn’t feel necessary and it and only served to disorient the reader. I have to assume this was done in order to make a very straight forward, yet incredibly implausible and cliche storyline feel new and fresh and enthralling and complex - but nah. This ain’t it, honey. You could tell this story starting with the middle and veer to the sides and crawl up the walls to the ceiling before arriving at the end / beginning and it still would be a disappointing way to spend your time.

UNLESS - dun dun dun - the last chapter changes EVERYTHING and this whole time we were actually reading everything from Imogen’s POV and not Jule’s as we have been lead to believe .... insert interpretation option B. The better, albeit equally as unrealistic and ridiculous, conclusion. I’ll take it.

So am I wrong? Did I just not “get it” or appreciate what this book was trying to do? I wish I could say I was confident in the fact that I misinterpreted the whole thing because I’m a self proclaimed dum-dum and that the superior, far more amusing finale was actually the intended one. But, alas, I’m pretty sure the purposely convoluted, full of pointless and unresolved plot holes, leading up to a very silly and anticlimactic pay off version is the GENUINE ending. And for that, I am genuinely unimpressed.



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