I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review is spoiler free.

I had never read any of E. Lockhart’s other books, although I keep hearing praise for We Were Liars, but Genuine Fraud looked absolutely fascinating.  I didn’t really know what to expect.

What a strange little book -- and I mean that in the best way possible.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like Genuine Fraud, but I’d really love more. I think the closest comparison I can make is to the film Memento due to the storytelling style.  Genuine Fraud is a story that is almost exclusively told backwards -- we start in the present and work back in time from there.  So you'll read a chapter, then the next chapter will take place two weeks before that, the next chapter will take place six weeks before that, etc.  It's a strange but incredibly effective way of telling the story.

Despite knowing what happens straight away (but do we really know anything?), the plot is absolutely engaging.  There are so many twists and turns that you’re kept on your toes the entire time.  Jules is an incredibly devious and self centered character, but she draws you into her unconventional life and it is hard to escape.

This is one of those funny books in which there are really no good characters.  I don’t mean ‘good’ as in ‘well written’.  I mean ‘good’ as in ‘decent people’.  Everyone in this story is a bad person in some way, which makes it all the more delicious to read. Jules tells the story in the first person, so we get to know her best.  But do we really know her?  She lives a life of glitz and glamour, but as the story goes on we see what's really beneath the surface.  She's such a compelling character that you can't help but root for, despite the fact that she is a terrible, terrible person.

This is one of those books that I just don’t want to say much about -- the thrill is in the discovery.  If you enjoy psychological thrillers, Genuine Fraud is a book you should absolutely pick up.  It will keep you guessing until the last page.  I found it incredibly hard to put down.

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
Lockhart has taken inspiration from Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley. It was an interesting study of the teen psychopath and was beautifully plotted. It started at the end of the narrative and jumped back to fill in the gaps, not always chronologically. I like this technique as a reader as it makes me feel the author is aware of my intelligence. Lockhart's characterisation throughout was edgy and on point. She created just the right amount of mystery at the start followed by a generous amount of not so obvious clues to lead the reader to the denouement. The relationship between the main characters was intriguing from the beginning and Lockhart skillfully kept it enigmatic. Engrossing and challenging.

I don't know if Iiked this book or not. It was confusing with the back and forth timeline and I found it a bit hard to follow. Saying that, the characters are deep and the plot is intriguing, so I'll say yes, I liked it.

I received a copy in exchange for an honest review!

Genuine Fraud was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Some elements I really flipped loved and others not so much.

The plot is oh-so-clever and kinda twisted, but enjoyable (although I'm not really sure enjoyable is the right word in the concept). I didn't mind the time hops and even liked the The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Postman Always Rings Twice elements.

I loved the unreliable narrator. Jules/Imogen really messes with your mind to the point where I didn't know what to believe, who to trust or if any of it was real. Not being able to trust the narrator adds and element of suspense to the mystery.

I did think the plot was a little too similar to Ripley in parts, but I love a retelling. Lockhart does it well so I was willing to forgive these similarities, but it does get extremely dark. The story is quite dour and hard to read at times, hence the mixed bag comment. I really wanted to love it, and whilst I didn't hate the book, I just didn't love it.

The writing itself is good. The tone is polished yet jumpy. Dramatic and constrained, I'd like something a little lighter next time please.

3 Stars in my Sky!

I’ve been a fan of E Lockhart for a while but I was disappointed in this one. It reminded me too much of the Talented Mr Ripley but it lacked a strong female lead. It was a short book that didn’t really grip me from the start

Interesting concept but predictable also after finishing it...what was the point. of it all. Just why?

The synopsis of this book intrigued me, especially as it is written by the author of We Were Liars.

I like many others, found the book hard to get into in the beginning because the story is told backwards. This made it confusing at times, although if the story had been told in order it probably would have been a little dull. The characters are interesting, although not particularly likeable.

One of the biggest problems with the book however, is if you have read a The Talented Mr Ripley then you will know exactly how this story is going to go as it is less of an inspiration as the author states, and more of a direct ripoff. The idea that someone could get away with so much with no hint of police is also a glaring issue.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book.

I am sorry I just could not get into the storyline and i did not understand the plot at all. Who is who?

Told in reverse order with time spiralling backwards to reveal the plot of the book, Genuine Fraud keeps the reader guessing until the end.

I really wanted to love this book after reading another of her's, but I couldn't connect to the characters or the plot. I was surprised by the twists in the book but I found it hard to stay interested. I understand it is based on The Talented Mr Ripley so maybe I would be better off reading that.

E. Lockhart creates some of the most compelling YA characters out there, and this is a fun if somewhat implausible read. This didn't grip me in the same way as We Were Liars, and if you struggle to suspend disbelief you may find this a battle to complete, but it's a page-turner all the same

Despite loving the unreliable MC and plot; I struggled to enjoy the complicated time jumps that the book follows. It made the story feel disjointed and also tripled my reading time as I tried to figure it out. However I still enjoyed the idea so would still offer this to others who are usually fans of Lockhart's works.

I hate giving low reviews, I really do, but I finished this book feeling nothing but relief that it was over and disappointment that it wasn't better. I didn't connect with a single character, which probably didn't help me when it came to connecting with the book. I really did have high expectations of this book, as We Were Liars is one of my favourites, but it just didn't measure up for me.

What a twisted tale and ride for the reader! Genuine Fraud by E.Lockhart has my brain still mulling even after the book has been finished. I am honestly unsure about how I feel about the book. First of all the book is not a linear forward story. It goes backward in vignettes, each showing more and more of a story that is really hard to take in. Perhaps it would have been easier if I was reading a paper book and could look back at times or if I took notes.

The main character seems to be Jule. She is a chameleon and I never felt like we had the chance to know the real Jule. She seemed to constantly take on the role of another. Imogen was another one of the main characters. She seemed to be searching constantly for something. Her up and downs and changes were significant. Why she ran away and why Jule was her friend or why Jule ran away and Imogen was her friend were unanswered questions for me…

Having said all the confusing parts above, I did not stop reading the book. I wanted to follow the trail backward. I wanted to know what was happening and how things twisted and turned. I found the characters interesting and the story line compelling. Genuine Fraud by E Lockhart was an interesting read with many hidden pieces.

DNF. 14% through and nothing like We Were Liars in terms of pace or plot. Just a bit confusing and not my kind of book.

Following E. Lockhart’s bestseller ‘We Were Liars’, I was keen to read the hugely anticipated ‘Genuine Fraud’. Billed as a mystery/suspense novel, its beginning packs a punch and its fast pace promises a thriller chock-full with action and excitement. From the start we glean that our protagonist, Jule, is on the run and is calling herself Imogen, her best friend’s name. It would appear that Jule is a wealthy heiress with plenty of time on her hands.
At this point the narrative goes into reverse chronology. Whereas many stories do begin at the end, then go back to the beginning and tell the story from there, this book begins at the end, then tells the story in reverse chronology in incremental stages until we get back to the beginning. Confused? You will be! Actually you soon get into the swim of it, although it makes the reader work a bit harder. This novel style could have been used to great effect and I think that because you’ve had to concentrate that extra bit, you anticipate a stunning ending, but unfortunately this is where it fails to deliver.
Many works of fiction can be unpopular if there are no likeable characters and whilst we all love to loathe an evil villain or a blackguard, it was hard to find the requisite amount of credibility in our antihero. She sees herself as the heroine in a film, as a lone vigilante, a superhero and a spy, capable of gratuitous violence, but we never find enough substance to justify her actions and the ending doesn’t wrap everything up, so feels anticlimactic. Is Lockhart trying to replicate an existential novel here rather than a mystery? In the story one of her characters refers to Camus’s L’Etranger, where you know everything that’s going to happen from the beginning, so there’s no point looking for causation, as human existence is ultimately meaningless. Yes, maybe art is imitating life here, but don’t we read fiction to escape life for a while? So the antihero didn’t have enough justification to be so evil and although the other characters weren’t unlikeable people, they weren’t fleshed out enough. Finally, the ending fell flat for me. There is no doubting the author’s talented writing and I think there was potential for this to be a greater book than it was.
Many thanks to Netgalley, the Publishers Bonnie Zaffre, Hot Key Books and Emily Lockhart for the opportunity to read and review an advance copy of ‘Genuine Fraud’ due to be published on 31st May 2018.

This book started out so promisingly. A con-woman with an obviously shady identity, hints at a dark past and seeking vengeance. Parallels with Dickensian orphans was a fun touch too. But as the book went on, I became increasingly disappointed. Telling the story backwards meant that I figured out fairly quickly what had probably happened and the 'how it was done' segment didn't really live up to the plot. I was also left with so many questions at the end. What was Jules' real background? Had she actually been trained in all the things she seemed to know about subterfuge? It seemed not, but then why did she invent this tragic origin story for herself? What was her intended endgame? It wasn't really clear. A fun read, but I won't be rushing back to reread any time soon.

Oh dear. I am so sorry but I just didn’t enjoy this book. I didn’t like any of the characters, the story was told in reverse which although clever and original just didn’t work for me. I was left confused (easily done) and felt rather unsatisfied as I finished the book with more questions than answers.

I loved We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. LOVED. IT. If you haven’t read it please do, it is one of the few books my non-bookworm sister has ever re-read and is a work of brilliant Young Adult fiction. So I had really high hopes for Genuine Fraud and I tried to keep these hopes suppressed lest it didn’t live up to expectations. I went into it with an open mind, (I did, I promise!), unfortunately though – and I really hate to say it – I was disappointed.

Told backwards we meet Jule who is staying at a plush hotel in Mexico, she meets a woman seemingly by accident in the gym but it appears this woman has come to track her down for an as yet undetermined reason so she escapes. Time then jumps backwards, sometimes it is by a week, at other times it’s a day or two but the story is slowly revealed until we have a full picture of what led Jule to a sumptuous resort and who she is fleeing.

Whilst I usually love a clever narrative structure like this, it, for some reason didn’t really connect with me on this occasion. I kind of guessed the ‘twist’ relatively early so the book became a bit of a fact-finding mission to see how the pieces fit together. There was also a real lack of suspense which was a real shame as I loved the concept of the plot, it was really clever and I was totally on board with the way things fit together. There are many pieces to this puzzle and some really great, ‘Oh My God’ moments that were brilliantly written – I just found it a bit difficult to keep track of.

I found it really hard to ‘get’ Jule, whenever I discovered something about her the rug was pulled out from under me in the next chapter. She is a difficult character to get to know and an even more difficult character to like, which is the point I think – it is far more interesting to read about an unlikeable and challenging character. She was cleverly drawn though and the glimpses into her were drip fed nicely (despite it being wholly frustrating for the reader!).

I feel bad for criticising Genuine Fraud, I really do, it isn’t badly written at all, in fact it is pretty gripping in places and some of the imagery is incredible. I loved all of the references to being the star of your own film (something I like to think I am when I’m walking around with my headphones in listening to music), the complicated relationships between women were excellent and there were electric moments of pure intensity between some of the characters but, when I finished it I felt completely flat. That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t recommend Genuine Fraud because I would – I didn’t hate it by any means, it just didn’t hit the spot unfortunately.

I absolutely loved this book! It's so gripping and suspenseful. I honestly don't know how E. Lockhart managed to pull this off backwards - but she did.

I read this novel courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

On occasion, I find a thriller soothing. The more terribly amoral its characters, the better. So this is how I approached Genuine Fraud: hoping for some terribleness and page-turning. And I got a little bit of both, but ultimately, the novel falls short of an ambitious goal.

This is a story of a girl told in reverse. We begin with a mysterious, Alias-like character, a chameleon putting on a mask, and gradually, a mystery unravels. Who is she? Who is her best friend? What really happened to make her this way?* What has she done? The clues are plentiful and every plot twist is properly foreshadowed and yet compulsion remains to at least see textual confirmation of one's theories. It works as a mystery, and there are flashes of interesting characterisation and both playing with genre tropes and with fictionality: the character imagines herself as a character; there's some intertextuality going on, too.

Unfortunately, the execution falls short of the promise of this premise. The most interesting questions either do not get answered or the answer is slight or cliched. The connection between Paolo and the protagonist, the ending: just doesn't seem big enough. There is just no big surprise left at the end: I reached the final page hoping for some properly jaw-dropping reveal only to find out that's it. Perhaps it's fitting - the book, in the end, cheated me, too.

*(view spoiler)

3 stars for compulsive readability and the first half of the novel. Half a star should be deducted for nonsense POV thoughts on ethnicity (what is it with guessing / describing everyone's origins? There's no facial shape that's recognisably ~Eastern European~, only some of us are graced with the magical beauty of the potato) and authorial decision to name a (very minor) Polish character Lita Kruschala. Seriously. Selecting a Polish name is not that difficult. Find a Polish soap opera on Wikipedia in English, scroll down the list, choose names, google pictures to check if gender and age is about right, build a database, mix and match. I don't know what tools people use to decide that "Kasha," "Ludo," "Gierek," "Lita" or "Roza" are Polish names, but seriously, this needs to stop. It's embarrassing. (And nope, choosing names of third generation immigrant people in the US is not the solution, they often have mangled and implausible names to give to a character who is first generation, Poland-born.)