Andrea Contos

Trigger warnings: Murder

5/10, this was such a confusing crime/thriller novel and I couldn't even understand what was going on half of the time. It was a really bad decision by the author to make the book have multiple POVs set one month apart from each other and the only thing telling them apart was Nora's POV being written in past tense and Sophie's POV being written in present tense making this book non-linear. The only other book I remember that was as confusing as this is Genuine Fraud and it was very confusing because the story went backwards in time except the beginning and the end (it was also a non-linear book) and I didn't enjoy that one. Another book that I read which was called It Should Have Been You was slightly better but only because it was linear, unlike this book.

Both of the main characters were flat and annoying, and I couldn't feel anything for them since Nora was a liar and she was disrespectful to some people but that might come from all the people who picked on her, Sophie was an attention-seeking ballet dancer, she even admitted it! Garrett was so frustrating to read because he was in the background half of the time and I didn't even know whether he was with Nora or Sophie or not. To be fair Garrett was a good antagonist considering that he was part of a cheating ring with a bunch of other people including Adam, Jude, and the principal and he probably killed anyone who tried to find out about it but why would he let someone access his computer so easily when Nora found out the password on a sticky note? There was a plot point about Maddie's death, Sophie initially thought Maddie killed herself but it was later revealed that Adam and Garrett killed her just to figuratively throw her away like trash.

Sophie was an unreliable narrator since she said Garrett disappeared then she said Garrett sent her some texts and is on a trip on the East Coast of America, which was kind of vague and confusing and even more so when I found out that Nora killed Garrett but Nora messaged Sophie to clear up the confusion in the end. The ending was just the people who were in the cheating ring facing some academic consequences, and that was it? If you like a mysterious action-packed novel try Cop and Robber by Tristan Bancks instead of this.… (mehr)

Caroline thinks she has to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of her best friend. There is a lot these 2 best friends don’t know about each other—too much really to believe they were even good friends. The title of the book makes it sound like the story will be about poor girls with problems at home that no one cares about when they go missing, but instead, it is about a rich boarding school girl named Caroline. Caroline is arrogant and annoying. I don’t like her. She is a valedictorian candidate that has a fake ID at 17 and spends a lot of time in dive bars. That’s a bit unrealistic. She also claims drunk guys are “asshats” while enjoying the dive bar scene. She does not cooperate enough with the police. She thinks she can do everything better than everyone else. The search for her friend is slow-paced without any big exciting breakthroughs or nerve-wracking moments. The story dragged through the middle. The author did a poor job of switching the point of view and that made things confusing. The writing style of the author is good. The character and plot development need work.… (mehr)

Throwaway Girls is a weighty and unflinching confrontation of our ingrained biases and the value we place on young women and which ones are deemed worth looking for, worth fighting for. The first third or even half of the narrative is sluggish and Contos’ florid prose periodically caused me to lose the vein of the story, while the alternating POVs take at least a few chapters to feel intuitive. But Caroline is my favorite kind of YA heroine, probably in that aspects of her character reminded me of myself as a teenager. Stubborn to a fault, recurrently myopic, and guilty of making often rash decisions, but always because she is driven, full of heart, and experiences every feeling so intensely. Caroline is fallible and makes numerous mistakes and poor (sometimes dangerous) judgments, but Throwaway Girls is her journey. Her journey to adulthood, to self-realization, to fully confronting her privilege and blind spots. It’s painful to read at times, again, probably because it reflects on my own experience of and confrontation of my inherent entitlements as a middle class white woman. The LGBTQ representation read to me as a fluid aspect of the story and sincere without the Hollywood melodrama. A haunting, often grim, read with plenty of sinister twists but not without fervidness and an acute and enduring message. Highly recommended.… (mehr)