Title: Beautiful Lies
Author: Jessica Warman
Release date: August 7, 2012
Publisher: Walker
Pages: 422
Source: BEA
Reading level: YA
Rachel and Alice are an extremely rare kind of identical twins—so identical that even their aunt and uncle, whom they’ve lived with since their parents passed away, can’t tell them apart. But the sisters are connected in a way that goes well beyond their surfaces: when one experiences pain, the other exhibits the exact same signs of distress. So when one twin mysteriously disappears, the other immediately knows something is wrong-especially when she starts experiencing serious physical traumas, despite the fact that nobody has touched her. As the search commences to find her sister, the twin left behind must rely on their intense bond to uncover the truth. But is there anyone around her she can trust, when everyone could be a suspect? And ultimately, can she even trust herself?
Beautiful Lies has been getting some awesome reviews and I was very eager to check it out. I had high hopes for this one since it sounded so unique and interesting. While it was definitely a unique story I did not find myself interested in it at all. Sadly this one did not meet my expectations.
There is something about Jessica Warman’s writing style that I just don’t like and for the life of me, I can’t put my finger on what it is. I have tried reading a handful of her books and no matter how much everyone else loves them I always find myself let down. Beautiful Lies has a very interesting premise and I was positive I would love it. Mystery, suspense, some paranormal elements possibly? What’s not to love? However once I started it I was supremely bored with the story and I just wanted to be done with it. If I was the type of reader who could DNF a book, I definitely would have stopped reading this one. I did stick with it though hoping that there would be something to redeem it and while I didn’t completely hate it, I just didn’t like it.
Alice and Rachel are completely different girls according to family and friends but I had a hard time telling them apart when reading about them. Their personalities were too similar. I had to check to see which one I was actually reading about. And then there was the whole switching places thing. If these two girls were so different from each other, how come their friends and family couldn’t tell when they switched places? There just seemed to be too many holes in the story and I couldn’t help but pick it apart.
One of the biggest problems for me was how long the book was. Beautiful Lies was over 400 pages and I honestly didn’t see the point of so many things that were included in the story. All the flashbacks and stories from the past didn’t seem to add to the current story and I found myself wanting to skim over them to get back to the mystery. As for the mystery I never saw it coming but that’s because it was kind of dumb. The whole kidnapping thing didn’t have anything to do with most of the rest of the story. It came out of nowhere and not in a good way.
Overall, Beautiful Lies really let me down and I think this may have been my last attempt at reading Jessica Warman’s books. This does not seem to be the author for me.
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Oh no. I’m sorry this one was a miss for you.
Such a shame that you didn’t like this one! I agree that the premise sounds really awesome.
I totally feel you on this one Katie, didn’t like it at all. I seriously had to push myself to finish this! Yes, nothing really flowed or fitted well throughout the whole story! Argh!
My review of Beautiful Lies 🙂
Well that’s disappointing. I’ve seen some mixed reviews for this book so far. I still want to give it a shot because of the awesome premise and I want to try reading something by Jessica Warman someday.
I have not read anything by Jessica Warman yet, i’ll have to try some from the library.
I am not keen on flashbacks. It’s a pity about this one, because I thought it would be WOW.
i kinda agree it was holes in the book, i didn’t understand a lot that was in it and some of the flashbacks i didn’t understand what it had to do with the mystery in finding her sister, and i also couldn’t really tell them apart, even though you said they had two completely different personalities they seemed exactly the same though.
I love twin stories, and this one did sound really good. The psychic connection seemed creepy.
Too bad you didn’t fully buy into it, and how they were too different as people but everyone still confused them.
How was the mystery in terms of figuring out suspects?
Lovely review 🙂