Firstly, Natalie was utterly unlikeable by anyone's standards and gets right on your nerves from the very first page, even when you learn of her background, which I assume is supposed to make you sympathetic towards her but fails utterly in that respect. Natalie is utterly selfish, manipulative, unbelievably vain and ruthlessly ambitious, but with no real motive - I get that she's supposed to be a modern-day version of the delightfully evil and twisted Lady Macbeth, but at least she had a character and personality that can be easily dissected! I'd also like to think that Kate is mocking high school and the 'Queen Bee' culture, but unfortunately I seriously doubt she is, evidenced by the chapter titles, which are laughably over-dramatic - The Valour of My Tongue, Nothing in his Life Became him Like the Leaving of it and An Absolute Trust to name but a couple.
I think Kate kept trying to be funny, but the weak attempts at humour made me like Natalie, who is the only point of view we are graced with, even less. Also, I found no point to the prologue which serves only to confuse the reader by being too vague and 'poetic' and borrow ideas from Twilight. The writing was abysmal, the dialogue clunky, the pacing exceedingly drawn out with awful characters that you honestly couldn't care less about and the high school setting of promiscuous thirteen-year-olds (well, maybe a bit older, but still) and events extremely unrealistic, not to mention difficult to get through (and fairly confusing if you do), even with skipping pages - thank god it was such a short book!
In short, I can't recommend this 'novel' to anybody, not even my worst enemy (though it might would be a good excellent form of torture) - I really didn't like it, especially as it could have been much better, and I'm no longer looking forward to reading the Fallen series.
[SYNOPSIS: Natalie Hargrove would kill to be her high school's Palmetto Princess. But her boyfriend Mike King doesn't share her dream and risks losing the honor of Palmetto Prince to Natalie's nemesis, Justin Balmer. So she convinces Mike to help play a prank on Justin. . . one that goes terribly wrong. They tie him to the front of the church after a party - when they arrive the next morning, Justin is dead. From blackmail to buried desire, dark secrets to darker deeds, Natalie unravels. She never should've messed with fate. Fate is the one thing more twisted than Natalie Hargrove.]
I haven't read this book yet, but I like Fallen and I would recommend it for you to read. Just try, there's no harm in trying. :)
ReplyDeleteApologies for the late reply - I've been ridiculously busy!
DeleteI have tried Fallen (see my review here if you like: http://aconfessiontomake.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/fallen-by-lauren-kate.html) - liked it a lot better than Betrayal but still don't think I'm a fan of Kate :P
Thank you so much for your comment though :)