I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

Everyone thinks they know the truth about Alice, but do they really? Everyone is walking around with their own pain, projecting it on one poor person when they think it makes them a smidge better about themselves. But how is that poor person feeling? This book isn't a book about kindness, it's a book about how kindness doesn't exist written from everyone's perspective on Alice but not by Alice.

A very emotional and painful read, one which every reader will remember and can relate to on some level.

This book had been on my TBR for several years before its recent UK release and I did enjoy it. There were certainly things in the book that made me feel uncomfortable but I would assume that was the aim of them. I really liked the concept of the book: the danger of lies, betrayal and deceit. It shows the nature of what lengths teenagers will sometimes resort to in order to protect themselves, their image and social standing. I liked that it was told from multiple perspectives: Elaine the super popular girl, Kelsie the now popular ex-best friend of Alice, Josh the sporty best friend of the now dead Brandon and Kurt the weird kid. I love a cliché stereotype and that definitely fed into this story. I thought it was really interesting that as the layers got peeled back it wasn’t until right at the end we finally hear from Alice and things become a bit clearer. Kurt was without a doubt my favourite character.

I read Moxie last year, around Christmas time, and really enjoyed the story of a young woman finding her moxie and starting a feminist uprising in her school. Of course when this popped up on Netgalley to request, I instantly hit the request button and crossed my fingers.

The Truth About Alice take on a lot, from the stereotypes we push in the high school narrative and the toxicity of putting those people in those boxes to slut shaming and the rumour mill.

Not one single character is likable - or, at least I found them to be so. They were manipulative of the situation, hypocritical and above all? They were deeply selfish. BUT THEY ARE TEENAGERS! That's how they should be! You can't tell me that at one point you weren't a little bit selfish. Although I found myself constantly grappling for someone to be Alice's sympathetic ear, I also couldn't help but feeling the sheer horror of the slut shaming.

Apart from the characters, I found the rest of the plot uninteresting. And ended up speed reading through half the book, as the plot continued to fill rather singular.

Overall, I would say this is an interesting concept with the gulls to try and call out the ways in which slut shaming occurs in high schools/secondary schools. However, it didn't quite meet the expectation of perhaps Moxie, and was left feeling rather 'meh'.

This book was disappointing to say the least. I requested this book as soon as I saw it because I absolutely loved Moxie. Unfortunately this book was a disaster compared to how amazing Moxie is. Whilst Moxie is uplifting and celebrates women helping other women, The Truth About Alice is all about how bitchy women and girls can be to each other. To some extent I did pity the main character, but the other characters were so annoying I could not enjoy this book.
I was really looking forward to another great release.

Review: I loved Jennifer Mathieu's UK debut, Moxie, last year so was pleased to see her debut novel, The Truth About Alice being published in the UK. Alice has a lot of rumours circulating about her; starting with how she slept with two guys at a party and send suggestive texts to one of them while he drove leading to a fatal car accident.

What was really interesting about this book was in spite of the title, we don't hear from Alice until the very end. Instead the story is mostly told by third parties; classmates, acquaintances, the car crash survivor. I thought this worked effectively as the story progressed and we not learnt more about Alice and the people telling the story. There were several characters whose stories became more central to this but in a traditional third perspective narrative this may have been less obvious or more easily lost, or worse still become didactic.

Throughout the book, the reader begins to question the narrative they are being presented with and what they are being told about Alice. Cleverly Mathieu ends up actually developing and learning about Alice through the lies in the same way as if this was meant to be a more traditional narrative. The entire book is about challenging the narrative and challenging preconceptions about people. We've all potentially judged someone unfairly and perhaps even contributed to that insidious side of society that shames women for any sign of sensuality or sexuality, or conversely the purported lack of it. Navigating this and simultaneously finding and hopefully claiming your own identity is a central part of many teenage girls and young women's experiences.

The Truth About Alice shows the way a single rumour spirals until it is out of control. It also shows the way people can cruelly catch on to this sort of bullying and make it snowball further.

Mathieu writes contemporary YA really well and explores feminism and the challenges of being a teenage girl really authentically. I look forward to seeing what Mathieu writes next.

Review goes live Wednesday 23rd May at 10am.

I have already recommend this book to so many people! It was a great plot and really easy to read!
I really enjoyed it! :)

Rumour has it that Alice Franklin is a slut. It's written all over the bathroom stall at Healy High for everyone to see. And after star quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car accident, the rumours start to spiral out of control. But exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there's only one person to ask: Alice herself. - edited from Goodreads 

I was super excited to read this book, as although it's Jennifer Mathieu's debut novel, it has been reprinted following the success of Moxie (which I absolutely loved, although for some reason didn't review - that will be coming soon!). However, The Truth About Alice, for me, fell flat. 

I enjoyed reading only some of the POVs from which this story was told, and there were about 4 or 5 of them. Some were engaging, like Josh, and some just weren't really that interesting at all. I also thought the differing POVs may not have lent themselves brilliantly to this novel - I would have preferred maybe only 2 or 3 if there were differing POVs at all. 

The idea of course interested me because it's about feminism and it's also YA. I think it's a novel about looking beyond what you believe a person to be to what they actually are, and for that reason I think it's really important. 

Alice was an interesting, complex character to whom terrible things happened, and I think it really shows how society today turns against someone if they make just one mistake. Alice was shunned because of a rumour, not even truth in the matter, and it was heartbreaking to watch all of her friends turn against her. 

Mathieu writes about feminism in a way that no one else does - raw, and from a teenage perspective. Moxie was just incredible, and I will definitely be reading anything else she brings out. So overall, this book fell flatly compared to her most recent novel, but for a debut, it really explores new territory (it was published in 2014) and although the way it was told didn't meld well with me, the ideas behind it, and of course Mathieu's writing, were really brilliant to read. 

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Rating: 3/5

This book begins by telling us ‘Alice Franklin slept with two guys in the very same night‘ and that’s a ‘definite, absolute, indisputable truth’. Whether true or not, the story spreads and Alice is labelled a ‘slut’ by the rest of the school and, eventually, the rest of her town.

Alice becomes a scapegoat. Once people think she’s done one ‘bad’ thing, she is an easy target to blame for things that go wrong – things that might be accidental or that they themselves are to blame for: ‘So we picked on Alice Franklin. A nobody, a slut, a killer.’ Vicious, unfounded rumours spread about her and she is slowly built into an evil character by the whole town.

The Truth About Alice reminded me a lot of Louise O’Neill’s Asking for It. It feels like a US version of Louise’s hard-hitting book and has very similar ideas – a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, inescapable religious viewpoints and a championed sports team that can do no wrong in the eyes of the town. It also had elements of the brilliant Will Gluck film featuring Emma Stone, Easy A, especially with the parallel of reading The Scarlet Letter in class.

The story is told with multiple perspectives and, although I found it took a while to get to grips with all of the characters and I was never quite as connected to them as I would have liked, I found it an effective way of exploring the various perspectives on and beliefs about Alice. As they have to come to terms with the truth about Alice, they are each faced with their own challenges about who they are. In some ways, the most interesting character is also the most irritating. Elaine is infuriating and reluctant to admit that she is at fault for anything (‘It’s weird how things can just get out of control sometimes. And it’s weird how, like, when it’s your job to be a popular bitch you just feel compelled to keep doing it sometimes.’), but she is perhaps the character that goes through the biggest journey in the book.

The Truth About Alice was actually published prior to Moxie in the US, but Jennifer’s UK publisher have now taken it on following Moxie‘s huge success. Whilst I didn’t love it quite as much as Moxie, it is an interesting look at stereotypes, slut shaming and how far people will go in order to be ‘popular’. Well worth a read!

The story is told via four main perspectives, Alice only actually has one chapter to herself, the last. The point is to show how small actions can snowball, and how perceptions can be false. None of the characters are perfect, they are all deeply flawed, with their own reasons and motivations. Each of them also has a piece of the truth about Alice, and therefore some responsibility for the bullying that is directed at her.

The characters are kind of unlikable, but they are very well-rounded and realistic. There is the popular queen bee whose lead everyone follows. There is the jock, best friend of star quarterback Brandon, who was there when he died. There is Alice’s ‘best friend’ who desperately wants to be popular. And there is the nerdy boy at the bottom of the social hierarchy, who lives next door to Brandon, and has had a crush on Alice for years. Each of them has their own reasons for their actions, and the book shows how shared responsibility, can lessen the burden of the individual, while crushing the victim all the same. It’s a powerful message about bullying, and how even minor actions can build and grow, having a massive impact on the lives of others.

It’s a powerful book, that addresses slut shaming, and bullying along with a host of other important issues. The writing is easy to get in to, making this quite a quick read. I think that it’s interesting that the story is told from the perspective of the people who had a significant role in the persecution of Alice. No-one likes to think they are a bully, and it’s a point of view that you don’t get to see very often. Overall, I do recommend this book to those who like young adult books that deal with important issues, but don’t go into it expecting to love all of the characters.

This was a beautiful book. The tale of Alice is a lesson to all that you should not always believe what you here.

I was glad to see Hodder were publishing THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE in the UK, as I really enjoyed MOXIE, which came out here last year. Like MOXIE, THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE is a realistic contemporary novel dealing with tricky social issues – in this case, it surrounds Alice, a girl whose reputation has been destroyed by rumours of her sleeping with two guys at a party. One of these two boys later dies in a car accident, making everything spiral even further out of control.

This novel is split between four narrators – Elaine, the popular girl whose party was where Alice’s spiral began; Kelsie, Alice’s ex-best friend; Josh, the dead boy’s best friend and survivor of the accident; and Kurt, the quiet nerdy boy who is secretly in love with Alice. The book is quite short so flips quickly between narrators, but I found all of them to have unique voices, and I never got confused about who was talking.

The theme of the novel is slut-shaming – Alice is believed to have slept with two guys at a party, and is ostracised by her peers for being a “slut”. This only gets worse when one of the guys involved – Brandon, the school football star – is killed in a car accident, and his friend Josh, who was in the car with him at the time, lets slip that it was Alice texting Brandon that distracted him and caused the accident. The novel also delves into other topics – the issue of abortion is also discussed, though not in the way you might think.

Every character in the book is flawed and layered – they could easily fall into teenage stereotypes (the prom queen, the jock, the nerd, the goody-two-shoes) but all of them are hiding things that make them three-dimensional and realistic. The messiness of every character in some way contributes to the situation Alice is in – whether they’re lying, keeping secrets, or ignoring her, they’re making everything worse. Pretty much every character is kind of terrible.

Except Kurt. I love Kurt.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE is a quick read that should appeal to anyone who likes realistic contemporary fiction about important social issues, and is an enlightening look at how toxic high school can really be.

REVIEW
I felt in the mood to read something more contemporary for a change and when I read the title of this book it immediately made me curious, I wanted to know who Alice was and what her story was.

The cover of this book is bright yellow so really grabs your attention. When you read the book you realise that it is a representation of the toilet cubicle wall at Healy high. The title of the book is written in a social media/graffiti style that works well. The authors name is done in a font/style that could be a pupils name on their locker perhaps which continues the school theme very well. There is also a recommendation for how good the book is by Zoella the author of Moxie. This book should really stand out on a bookstore shelf!

The genres I've seen listed for this book are Children's fiction, Teens & YA which is the age group the book is aimed for and fits well. I would also add contemporary and realistic fiction to the genre list.

This book is set in and around Healy High and it's pupils. Healy is very proud of it's sporting achievements and the boys in the team often get given extra time or an extra helping hand to complete assignments.

This book's main character is Alice, a teenager who at the beginning of the book is firmly within the circle of the popular gang at school. Alice doesn't have an easy life, there's just her and her mother at home. Her mum is always going out leaving Alice at home to fend for herself. Being in the popular clique doesn't come cheap, you need the latest fashionable clothes, as well as the make-up and confidence to pull it all off. Alice has always done odd jobs here and there for people to earn her own money. During the summer Alice got a job at the sports centre where the older good looking male Tommy Cray and Mark Lopez both work as lifeguards. Alice's best friend at the time also hangs around and flirts with the guys.

I really enjoyed the various different views on exactly what happened and how it happened too. We have points of view from the super popular girls Elaine O'Dea, the girl who has THE party where IT happens. Then there's Brandon Fitzsimmon's best friend Josh Waverly as well as the loner math & science geek Kurt Morelli and the trying so had to remain popular and in with the cliche so much so she blanks her former best friend to remain one of the popular girls! I found it interesting how the different characters had such varying opinions of the same person and set of circumstances.

Everyone that's anyone is at Elaine's party it is the place to be seen. Even though Elaine and Alice had a run in years ago about Alice making out with Brandon, whilst Brandon was supposed to be with Elaine. Though Elaine and Brandon were on and off so much I don't know how Alice was supposed to know if they were on or off! Anyhow Elaine certainly hadn't forgotten or forgiven. So when someone says that Alice has had sex with both Brandon and Tommy on the same night upstairs in one of the bedrooms during Elaine's party it soon gets around.

Then more fuel is added to the fire when the drunken Brandon Fitzsimmon's and best friend Josh Waverly are involved in a car crash. Brandon dies and Josh is taken to hospital but thankfully survives to tell the tale. Josh is of course questioned by the Police who have already tested samples of both boys blood and know they were well over the limit. Josh is stunned and set completely adrift by the loss of his best friend, Healy High star sports player Brandon. Josh really is devastated and when his best friend's mum comes to see him asking what happened, and if Brandon was distracted. Josh is still kind of shell shocked but manages to blurt out that Brandon had been distracted by texts from Alice Franklin.

So now the whole school has a real grudge against Alice as it is she that caused the death of Healy High's star sports player. That combined with the other gossip about her having sex with two different guys inn one night gives the popular girls enough ammunition to make her life hell. No one actually confronts Alice face to face.. It is all done behind her back by those she once thought her friends. Even best friend Kelsie shuts Alice out. In fact Kelsie goes even further to cement her place in the popular clique. When the popular girls, headed by Elaine are all in the toilets one day talking about how disgusting, and how much a slut Alice is Kelsie just blurts out that Alice had an abortion too! The girls believe Kelsie as they know her stictly religious mum makes her go down to the abortion clinic to protest against abortion so it seems viable that if Alice went to get an abortion that Kelsie & her mum would have been there and seen her go in. The girls look at Kelsie quite doubtful of what she has just revealed. Kelsie panic's and has to quickly think of something to do that will ensure her place with the popular girls so she takes a black sharpie and writes something nasty about Alice then hands the pen to another girls. One by one they write something on the toilet cubicle wall which soon becomes widely referred to as the "slut wall".

I really liked the character of Alice, had she been a male character in the book who'd had sex with two girls on the same night at a party she would have been patted on the back and congratulated for it! It would have been another two notches to add to the belt or bedpost.

It just shows how society view things from totally different angles and their opinions differ depending on the persons gender. I don't want to give away the whole story or even hint at it so I can't really go any further on that point. I do feel sympathy for Alice. Even though Alice sort of shrugs her shoulders, keeps her head down and just tries to go through the motions of school. Even her schoolwork begins to suffer. Which brings me to my other favourite character in this book, Kurt Morelli, the quiet loner at school who is the nerd who is great at maths and science. His parents died in a car cash and he is being brought up by his grandmother. Kurt lives near Brandon, in fact they sometimes share a beer whilst sitting on Brandon's roof, though neither of them would tell anyone about this. Kurt and Alice become friends when he offers to help her with her homework. Initially dubious Alice thinks he wants sex with her but that is not Kurt's true intention. Sure I think if Alice had offered maybe Kurt would have thought about it but his feelings for Alice are more admiration and he is mainly wanting friendship.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing reading this book were that this was a very realistic tale that could well be happening in any high school near you.

It is the combination of a rumour, some gossip and a large portion of peer pressure that make what happens in this book so convincing and life like. The whole writing graffiti on the toilet cubicle wall that has been going on for years. It just takes that first person to set the ball rolling by being the first to write something. The book illustrate very well how one small lie can lead to another and how quickly it can all get out of control.

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!*

I’ve had Moxie on my TBR for ages now, ever since I got it last year during the summer, but I haven’t gotten around to it. So when I was luckily approved for Jennifer Mathieu’s forthcoming book (although I think it was previously published in the US) – I decided to get stuck right in.

I think The Truth About Alice is an important and timely novel. It really addresses the constant slut-shaming and discrimination young girls face, especially during their school years where rumours spread like wildfire. However, I did feel like this book ultimately failed to deliver the strongest message.

What I liked about this book was that it was told from a few people’s perspectives – and all their narratives revolved around the events of Alice Franklin and a night at a party. I preferred Mathieu’s way of telling Alice’s story through those around her instead of through her own voice, but I just feel like she got swallowed up in these other characters and their own lives that she didn’t quite hit the nail on the head regarding the importance of Alice and her potential innocence.

Obviously Alice isn’t the only main character and we have to give room to the others who need character arcs to develop around them, but I felt like I knew the same thing about Alice when I finished as I did when I started. Maybe it’s because I had a certain notion about whether the rumours were true or not that was correct in the end, but I still feel there wasn’t really anything brilliant or life-changing. As much as I hate to say it, I feel like The Truth About Alice will be one of those books that fades into the crowd of books that I’ll forget about in a few months time.

Thankfully though, this hasn’t put me off reading Moxie because all I’ve heard about that are good things!

Jennifer Mathieu is the author of Moxie which has been talked about a lot. I thought this was the follow up but it's actually Mathieu's debut which makes sense because this does feel more like a debut, potential with room to grow. I think just never been published officially in the UK before, or maybe they having a re-go at it. It was originally published four years ago anyway.

This book is told in multiple points of view in first talking, each talking about what they know of Alice Franklin and their perspectives on the rumours about her. I think this works well and show the show spread of rumours. The characters are given motivates for doing what they do that makes them some what sympathetic sometimes but still pretty dislikeable. Some where rather samey.

I appreciate what this novel was going for. There's this big secret at one point, however, it in a way it supports slut shaming. I think it was meant to be question what you hear, except I don't think it does a good enough of job of saying that. I think would have been better as an obvious lie, or rumour that spread out of control.

Overall, I give this book 4/5 stars for grilled cheeses. I do like this book and it pretty short (I apparently read it in three hours). I get what it was going for with the slut-shaming, it missed the mark somewhat. It does add and support narrative against slut shame, with the emphasis on small town rumours I get what it was meant to be. This was Mathieu debut and know her eventual follow-up Moxie is meant to be geniusly feminist (or something). I did enjoy the process of reading this book (I never know what to say about books with important messages) and if you like a book that tries then go for it.

This was a strange novel in some ways.
It deals with a really relevant topic, but I felt it was rather lightweight.
Told from a range of views we can see just how important reputations and rumours are in this environment.
Alice has some integrity, but none of the characters come out of this particularly well.
Things were resolved well by the end.

Second time I read this (2018) I feel the topic holds more resonance. I still feel it’s quite a quick read and that some areas could have been developed further, but the story itself and the issues it explores are very relevant.
It’s a sad truth that we still have such double standards. The use of the various narrators is clever, and it allows us to gain understanding of the event/ideas.
My overwhelming feelings having read this a second time are sadness and anger. When will people learn?
Thank you NetGalley for reissuing this.

Perfect for fans of Thirteen Reasons Why and The Exact Opposite of Okay, both among my favourite contemporaries of all time, The Truth About Alice is a book that I couldn’t put down. It’s the quickest I’ve read a book in a long time!

The story of Alice is told through the eyes of a group of teens, excluding Alice. This made for a really interesting makeup because you never know what’s rumour and what’s true – surely there’s more to Alice than all the rumours about her? I think that’s what really makes the story so gripping; you don’t really know where it’s all heading until right towards the end, and as things start to unravel there’s the uncertainty of how it’s all going to affect Alice.

The reason I rated this one slightly lower is because it just didn’t seem to go anywhere – it felt like I was reading with some expectation that was never quite met. I would like to see there be more of a resolution to all that goes on in the book – so much more could have happened! Nevertheless, I think it’s a really good read and one that everyone could learn from regarding the spread of rumours.

The Truth About Alice was a truly wonderful take on high school slut-shaming. I particularly enjoyed the blneding of past/present which made it truly fascinating to uncover what really occurred. With strong examples of friendship as well as identity, this is a great book for teenagers.

The Truth About Alice is that it’s kind of... eh.

Having read Moxie by the same author I was so excited to read this book, about the cruelty of teenagers and how rumours can ruin lives. But it didn’t quite have the same spark, and the characters showed such relentless cruelty and no one ever really learnt from their mistakes.

This is a re-release of a book from 2014, so it’s possibly unfair to compare it with her more recent work, but I just don’t see this as being anything new or innovative like Moxie was.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review)