Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
June barely has time to mourn the death of her best friend Delia, before Delia’s ex-boyfriend convinces her Delia was murdered, and June is swept into a tangle of lies, deceit, and conspiracy.
I’d like to thank YA Love Magazine for running the competition in which I won my copy of Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls.
I probably wouldn’t have bought this book myself, although I did end up really enjoying it – the title is a little morbid and I was a little scared that people would think that I was considering suicide! The UK Cover is also dark so adds to the morbidness of this book.
SNFBG is written primarily from June’s perspective, a typical high school girl with a typical high school boyfriend. A year prior to the beginning of the story, ‘something’ happened which led her friendship with her best friend, Delia, to come to an end. Now, Delia is found, burned to death in her stepfather’s shed. Initially it seems to be a straight-forward suicide, but as June reaches out to Delia’s new friends who have their own suspicions about what really happened, she starts to believe that there’s more to Delia’s death than meets the eye.
The perspectives in the book are really clever – with current events written in the present tense and flashbacks in the past tense, and the multiple perspectives are used really well.
The book could easily be split into two sides – the first half of the book is much more linear, whereas the second half is full of twists and turns with a shock ending. This definitely kept me reading – I simply had to find out what happened in the end.
On the ending, it takes a little thinking to figure out what actually happened – which isn’t necessarily bad, but there are a few plot points which are a little frayed, that is it’s a little too difficult to make out what actually did happen. A few characters are left at an end, and if I had to make any changes to the book, I’d personally resolve the book a little more wholly – and I’d ramp up the toxic relationship between June and Delia a little more. Their relationship is hinted at throughout the novel, but nothing really seems to come of it.
I really think this book is a great addition to any YA bookshelf – it’s different to most of the YA fodder out there, and the ending is delightfully unpredictable.
Have you read this book, or are you planning to? What did you think? Comment or tweet me @annalisebooks 🙂
Annalise x
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