TEEN: The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove - Lauren Kate

Release Date: 06/01/11

BOOK BLURB:

Lauren Kate's irresistible first novel, The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove , features the most ruthlessly ambitious heroine since Lady Macbeth. Natalie is utterly determined to cement her position at the top of the high school social ladder by becoming prom queen. When it looks like an interfering ex-boyfriend might get in her way, she devises a little prank to humiliate him. But when the prank goes devastatingly wrong, Natalie starts to lose control of her life. Caught in a web of dark secrets, shame and abuse of power, it's not guilt that eventually defeats Natalie. It's fate: the only thing she can't control...


REVIEW:

If you want a story that’s well known with a touch of modernity adding to the mix backed with a queen bitch lead character then you’ve come to the right place as this, the first book by Lauren (which only beat her Fallen book to the shelves by a few weeks), takes the reader into a very dark world of madness and despair as she proves that Ladies can do it for themselves in this modern retelling of the “Scottish Play.”

It really is dark, the character delightfully twisted and her own mind is her own worst enemy as the book develops after her little prank which makes this a book to read in the dark to get the full rich flavour of the a story as revenge racks up against betrayal. Beautifully written, with some cracking characters, some wonderful prose and wrapped up in prose that requires a black straightjacket. Great stuff.

TEEN: Fallen - Lauren Kate

BOOK BLURB:

What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours? 17-year-old Lucinda falls in love with a gorgeous, intelligent boy, Daniel, at her new school, the grim, foreboding Sword & Cross ...only to find out that Daniel is a fallen angel, and that they have spent lifetimes finding and losing one another as good & evil forces plot to keep them apart. Some angels are destined to fall...


REVIEW:

Whilst this theme seems to be replacing Vampires in young adult fiction, the author really has to do something special to keep the audience glued. That said this offering is one that has had a lot of press, a lot of hype and a fair few reasonable reviews from people that I tend to trust. So feeling a tad more confident about this title I finally bit the bullet and decided to give it a go

What unfurled however was sadly disappointing, the plot was slow, the “sexy” aspect pretty tame and it really didn’t put any fear into me as it wound its way to its conclusion. It did have potential, it did have some interesting characters however the ones that spoke to me had fleeting parts to play and the author really let themselves down with substandard two dimensional principle protagonists. A sad shame in my opinion but at the end of the day these things sometimes happen.