Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

3 Stars

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for sending me a copy. 

Genuine Fraud is a thriller from E. Lockhart, otherwise known as the author of immensely popular, We Were Liars. I've read a few of E. Lockhart's books at this point so I was intrigued. The title really stuck out to me, it's a bit of a paradox. The words genuine and fraud are two words that very much contradict each other. I like it. I thought it was cool. So, anyway, there were things I liked and things I didn't. I will explain that a bit now.

E. Lockhart has this incredibly haunting way of writing which makes her a great voice for thriller. I wouldn't really call the other books she has written, thrillers. This was quite dark in comparison. But, it worked quite well because E. Lockhart has such a distinctive style. She also tends to reveal little about characters and sort of just keeps questions swimming around in your head. This was definitely the case with Genuine Fraud. I had so many questions and every time something was resolved, another can of worms was opened with it. Which I can't work out if I liked not. I don't think enough questions were answered at the end for me to like it.

I loved the structure. It was really interesting. E. Lockhart usually has quite an interesting way of telling stories and this was another one. It was cool, it went backwards which was cool and I think sets it apart a bit. Just opening the book you're trying to figure out what's going on but the more you read and go back, the more you find out. It worked really well with the type of story this is. I definitely liked it.

It was really gripping. I didn't want to put it down because I was so eager to find out what was happening. It was eerie at times and there was definitely something a bit unsettling which is often the tell tale sign of a good thriller. I read it in essentially one sitting because I just wanted to understand what was happening. That's also one of the tricks of beginning at the end, it gets you wanting to know what happened to lead up to that moment.

The things I didn't necessarily like was the fact that the ending was a bit weird to me. I feel like there were a lot of things we didn't find out but it was still kind of final. I think this could've been fixed if the book was just a bit longer. I didn't feel like there was a huge amount of characterisation which was where a lot of my questions throughout came from. I'm not sure, it just didn't feel like the right way to end it.

I also think it was a bit predictable. To a certain point there was definitely this air of 'oooh what's happening? What's going on?' but after that certain point it got very predictable and I was immediately able to understand the direction it was heading into and to me that was a bit disappointing. Especially when you compare it to We Were Liars which had such a shocking and unexpected ending. So, perhaps I was looking for just a little more there. It fell just a little flat.

So, overall. Genuine Fraud was good. I wouldn't read it again. But, for a quick thriller, it was pretty good. I enjoyed it. It was dark and creepy. It had some really good aspects and fell flat on a few things but not bad.