Getting the Girl
written by Susan Juby
The thing about mysteries is that the writing can be absolutely stellar, but if the big reveal sucks, the whole book seems pointless. That is the central problem about Getting the Girl. Mack is an awesome narrator, the kind of guy you think doesn't really exist in real life. The whole story is incredibly unique and convoluted (in a good way). I'm reading this and thinking, "Wow. Susan Juby sure has gone a long way since Alice, I Think." And then, in a totally anticlimactic way, the Defiler is revealed, and it all seems like a waste of time. Why bother? It was nothing shocking, nothing to provoke thought, nothing that would warrant an emotional response of any kind. I was having so much fun theorizing, only to have it be the most boring result possible. Yawn. And the thing is, there are so many great characters she's created that could and would have been better as the perp, and she doesn't pick any of them. What if it had been Vanessa? Or Dini herself? How much more amazing would that have been to read? So, good writing, good characters, but horribly flat ending that really reveals nothing at all about the problems in the high school hierarchy.
Rating: 4/5
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