Although I enjoyed Genuine Fraud; I did find it confusing at first because of the reverse telling of the story.. Once I got used to the writing style I did enjoy it and it kept my attention. However, I do feel it's not one of E. Lockharts best.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The mystery aspect is something I really enjoyed and I couldn’t predict what has happened, since the book is told by going back in time. I loved following Jule as a character. And this is a book I will certainly re-read, since I am very curious to see what kind of things I will read with know the things I know.

From the author of the unforgettable New York Times bestseller We Were Liars comes a masterful new psychological suspense novel--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.



After reading Lockhart's We Were Liars a few years back, I was excited -to say the least- to read her latest work. Unfortunately, Genuine Fraud failed to live up to the expectations created both by Lockhart's previous work and by its summary. In short, it's just not as exciting as it promises to be.

To be honest, the only thing I enjoyed about the book was its narration. The story was told in a reverse chronological order that a) allowed the author to show off some writing skills, and b) added some mystery to an otherwise quite predictable story. As soon as I had familiarized myself enough with the characters' names and the time-frame, I found it quite easy to guess what had happened. But even that didn't make me excited or eager to see what's next. I was, overall, simply uninterested. 

The characters themselves seemed to hold enough potential; in a sense that demanded readers interested enough to pay close attention to them, to try to figure out their motives and their desires. Unfortunately, since I was so uninterested in the overall story, I just couldn't bring myself to care about them enough to perform a close character study. 

The one feeling I couldn't shake throughout the entire book was that Genuine Fraud could be brilliantly translated into the big screen, that this particular story and way of storytelling would be much more suitable for a screenplay, rather than a book. It was a book that, sadly, lacked any sort of spark, intriguing plot twists, or compelling arc. 



**An ARC was provided in exchange for an honest review.**

This book opens with a young woman who is clearly on the run, using a stolen identity and works backwards so you can find out how she came to be living it up in a luxury Mexican island and using her friend's name and documents. The story is told in reverse, and is full of twists and turns as you begin to piece together the how, what and whys. It's frustrating in places as you lose the threads of the story, and just as you think you've got a handle on what Jules is up to, the explanation is pulled out from under you. But that's kind of the joy of it. It's a wild ride of a book, and a quick read; if you want a little bit of escapism and a little bit of suspense then this is the one for you.

Although this book clever, intriguingly structure, suspenseful and interesting, I did feel slightly detached throughout. Yet, that kind of did go with the tone of the novel. It was told in the episodic style that was revolving backwards, meaning that we learnt about something before knowing the significance of it in a different style. To get the best use out of this, I've probably got to reread the book so that I can see some of the smaller plot devices I might have missed. An excepted read though, over all.

I didn't like this as much as I wanted to ,at times it felt disjointed and the characters were not always believable .I'm glad I read it as it was interesting but was nothing new.

This was a tricky book to like.
It’s clever, intriguingly structured but I felt detached from it throughout.
It’s probably best to go into this without knowing too much. The basic story revolves around two young girls - Imogen and Jules. They are connected but we’re never totally sure how. Genuine friendship, or a clever con?
Told in an unusual episodic style it was reminiscent of ‘Memento’. Jules was a character I never felt we got to know so it was hard to feel much about what we learn about her.

This book is odd. It's suspenseful and interesting, and the main character is so intriguing, but it is also missing something. If I weren't trapped on a plane while I was reading it I think I would have lost motivation to read it. The strongest part of this book is the character development. I felt like I got way inside Jule's head while still not knowing so much about her. We get only glimpses into her past and what made her become the person she is. The structure of the book was also pretty interesting. It wasn't the masterful structuring of We Were Liars but it revealed information perfectly for the plot. The weak points of this novel don't outweigh the good points, but I didn't really feel compelled to keep reading beyond a desire to understand Jule better. Overall, not incredible but not awful.

I felt tortured as a reader. Genuine Fraud is one of those books which toy with you, and whether you’ll like it depends on how much endurance you’ve got as a reader. I clearly didn’t have enough.

We’re thrown straight into the story without any knowledge of what is going on. The main character Jules seems to be on the run, she goes by a different name and is telling lies. Why? That’s what you have to keep asking yourself for the duration of the book, which is told in a confusing moving-backwards-in-time fashion.

"You don’t add up. You keep changing the details of the stories you tell, and it’s like you don’t even know it."

In the end, there wasn’t that much to it though. I love a good twist, but the only way suspense is created here is by withholding information from the reader - information which you’ll be able to guess anyway.

It doesn’t really help that the characters aren’t likeable at all. The main character is sociopath and this is her story, but unlike books such as American Psycho there’s no uncomfortable fascination I was able to develop for her character, but pure annoyance. People she meets along the way, the classic rich white kids kind, aren’t much more interesting to read about, so their fates didn’t cause any kind of reaction in me. Oh well.

This not the kind of book you can keep putting down and pick back up again in a couple of hours/days as it can get very confusing as the book is written backwards so it starts at the end and works it way to the how things began which I personally did not like at all. I also did not like the protagonist which I appreciate is kind of the idea and sometimes this is great but for me it meant that I wasn't invested at all in the story or the characters. The only saving grace was that it was fairly fast paced and there was always something happening and that did keep my attention.

It's quite hard to tell anyone about the book without giving it away but in short its about stolen identity and the people affected. I did thing the ending was a bit rushed with more questions than answers. I get what the author was trying to achieve but unfortunately I don't think it really worked.

It wasn't a terrible read and I did get through it fairly quickly but I wouldn't recommend it. That being said I think I will E. Lockhart's first book ago as I have heard great things.

I will say one positive and that's the great cover!

I received this book free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

I really enjoyed this book - well written, clever and original, with flawed realistic characters. Yes, there are obvious parallels with The Talented Mr Ripley, but it wasn't a problem for me and the author mentions this in the note at the beginning of the book. The way the story was told in reverse chronology worked really well and added the intrigue. I am definitely going to read other books by E Lockhart.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I really wanted to love this book, but I didn't finish it. I actually thought that the characters were the same person at first, and got very confused when reading it! The writing style jarred with me, and I couldn't get to grips with it, and the characters didn't engage me like I hoped. DNF. Head fab reviews so perhaps it is just not my cup of tea, but I was disappointed.

Arc provided by netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thou i (surprisingly) enjoyed the first two chapters of this book, the rest felt so flat to me. No suspence, dull most of the time, the characters are not particularly likable and definitely not interesting or complex. I didn’t get them.
I didn’t read We Were Liars so i’m not comparing this book to that work but at the same time, Genuine Frats wasn’t really for me and i’ve found the final Author Note like a further explanation (read: justify) that was necessary to be added since the whole book wasn’t brilliant.
Sorry, not for me.

This book was great from start to finish. It flows great and really holds your interest. Jules is a well written character and she's full of surprises, a little crazy and carefree I guess you would say. To me this was a total flip from We Were Liars which was amazing but way different. I love both and look forward to whatever comes next. This does leave you hanging so maybe a continuation novel is in store?? That would be great!!

One of the most disappointing books of the year. I was so excited for Genuine Fraud and the first chapter was brilliant. It was fast-paced, shocking and really made me want to read on. But, after that, everything fell flat. I could see how it was supposed to be gripping as each chapter ended with a teaser of information. You got one answer and ten more questions. The problem was, the questions didn't interest me and I couldn't feel the suspense.

Jules is a very dislikable protagonist and there are no other characters to empathise with, meaning the story is hard to connect with. Her actions have no realistic motives and her line of thought is hard to follow. I thought I'd get some answers but I was 99% in with still no real, solid, genuine (ha) answers and by that point I'd lost interest.

The story jumps around in chronology to the point where it becomes more confusing than anything else. Having said all that, I read the whole book in 2 days and so found it fast-paced. I just kept getting bored and distracted...

I'd compare it to There's Someone Inside Your House, which was also a big disappointment this year!

I'm a little bit OCD when it comes to numbers (well ok, maybe I'm severely OCD about numbers) so I wasn't sure how I would cope with Genuine Fraud beginning at Chapter 18. Well I was so engrossed in the story that I didn't really notice, to be honest. I just wanted to know what had happened to get to this point in time and even though I sometimes didn't know what the devil was going on, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.

Jule and Imogen are unlikely friends but friendship doesn't see class, religion or skin colour but Jule is a fraudster and it isn't long before she turns herself into a mirror image of Imogen. It isn't long before Jule assumes Imogen's identity and starts living her life, but Imogen will turn up and put an end to all that, won't she?

There is so much suspense in Genuine Fraud, making it a compelling addictive read. I felt so afraid for Imogen's safety early on and as time ticked backwards that feeling intensified until I had to read every single page before going to sleep. I don't know whether it was the working backwards, but I did sometimes feel a bit confused at times as to what was going on. Despite this, it held my attention enough to continue on and I wonder if perhaps we haven't seen the last of Jule...in fact I think a sequel is a must!

Genuine Fraud is a quick read at less than 300 pages which is just as well as it's quite hard to put down! A super little YA read that made me look at unlikely friendships in a different light. It's true that you can never see inside someone's mind, and nor would I want to, but it's frightening to think that some people may have hidden agendas. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer...but which is which?

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

Dull. Took me a while to catch on to the narrative structure, but even then still felt confused. It could've been fun telling the story back to front but it wasn't. Just CONFUSION. Even the "ending" that was really the "beginning" was just like okay whatever. The narrator was a hot mess and so unreliable. Too unreliable and too much of a mess that it was hard to follow the story / to be invested in the characters.

I loved We Were Liars when I read it a few years ago, but it did not prepare me for Genuine Fraud! This is however a stunner of a book. Lockhart reveals plot and character details slowly, drawing you in as the story unfolds backwards in time, meaning you are constantly guessing and second guessing throughout.

Jule is a disturbing and flawed heroine, but you can't deny she's got chutzpah!