Title: Genuine Fraud
Author: E. Lockhart
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Page Count: 264
My Rating: 3.75/5 stars

The story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.

Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.
Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.
An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.
A bad romance, or maybe three.
Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.
A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.
A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.




I enjoyed E. Lockharts 'We Were Liars' but it wasn't one of my favourite books ever so when picking up Genuine Fraud I wasn't overly sure that I was going to enjoy it and for the first probably 100 pages, I didn't. I will admit that whilst I enjoyed the book overall, the beginning of the book really out me through my paces as half the time I had no clue what was going on and it took me quite a while to realise that the book is told in reverse chronological order so basically the first chapter is the end of the story etc etc.

Now that I had that out of the way, I really began to enjoy this novel. The trippy timeline was annoying and confusing to begin with but as the novel went on more and more was revealed to you about the characters as you heard more and more about their past. Without giving away too much I'll just say that as the book goes by you realise that everything is not what it seems, wait scratch that, NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS!!!!

'Imogen' our main character (if you read the book you'll know why I'm a bit sceptical about that name) at the beginning was not likeable at all to me, she seemed a bit cocky and full of herself but as her character progressed in the novel, I can't say that I enjoyed her more but she definitely become a more complex character as did the others and I thought Lockhart did a fantastic job of revealing more and more about each character when you needed to know so that the shocks in this book were even bigger.

The story of the book was fantastic. Once getting over the initial confusion I was hooked by the story.  The was things played out and happened were so interesting and there were times where I couldn't put the book down because I was so lost about what was going on but in the best way possible!!

So the question is, if I enjoyed this novel so intensely, why only 3.75 stars? Well really I only enjoyed about 66-75% of it as I WAS SO CONFUSED HALF THE TIME. I think that doing this kind of story in reverse chronological order was a great idea and added so much to the story but I would've liked to have been clued in a little bit more about the structure so that I wasn't spending half my time thinking well how is this character still alive when they died in the last chapter?? It baffled me so much that I almost put the book down permanently but luckily I didn't.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this book now that you know about the structure (I just saved you hours of confused, you're welcome) because other than that it was a fantastic, thrilling experience that I'd love to read again.