The revenge by Hannah Jayne.
He just wanted a little revenge when he posted his ex's location online. He never meant to lead a predator to her doorstep...
After a bad breakup, Tony's ex-girlfriend Hope embarrasses him in front of the whole school and spreads vicious rumors. Tony is devastated and in a moment of revenge, he makes the location on her phone public. But a week later, when Hope calls Tony and begs him to stop the prank, he hears a shriek and a car door slamming. Then the call is dropped. Too late, Tony realizes that he may have put Hope's life in danger. Can he trace Hope's movements and save her before times runs out?
A good read with good characters. Slow but readable. 3*.

This isn't doing anything new with the high school drama genre. I don't think there's anything interesting anymore about high school popularity contests and social hierarchies. I'd like this to push the boundaries a little more...

I think this book brings to light the horrors that come with not being properly safe on the internet. We talk to kids about internet safety all of the time, but it's just so available for them. It is the world they live in and they don't always realize the real-world implications of their actions. This was not my favorite book and I don't know that I would recommend it to kids, but I do understand what the author was trying to do here.

Is it just me or is this book a little problematic? It seemed to glorify doxxing and obsessive tendencies. I don't think this book was my cup of tea.

I had high hopes going into this book and it ended up taking me the longest time to finish it as I kept putting it down to read other books.
I just found the characters to be not very interesting and the plot did not hold my attention for some reason. That being said, I believe that not all books are meant for all people and others may very well really enjoy this book so please don't be put off by my own opinion and experience. I received a copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This title was a Did Not Finish. Unfortunately, I was unable to connect with it whether it be for characters, story-line or writing style.

Thank you for providing me with a copy.

Revenge is a very well used tactic. Exacting revenge on someone who wronged you is the first thing that pops into most people's heads. Someone stole your man? 1-800-smackaho. Did your neighbor back over Fluffernuts and didn't tell you? Call Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, INC. But what if someone took their revenge plot a little too far? In this book, karma is real and he has a name.

Tony broke up with Hope. Tony is a nobody. Hope is a pseudo-celeb in their town. Tony thought things ended on good terms. Hope didn't think so. She goes to school one day and reads some of the personal letters Tony wrote her while they were dating. Sounds harmless enough. But not when you go to a school that can turn on you with the drop of a dime. Tony gets bullied and embarrassed and decides to get revenge.

But after his revenge, Hope goes missing and now the entire town is out for blood. They want Tony behind bars for hurting their precious Hope. The media and her parents paint her as this angel who volunteers and donates. But Tony knows the real Hope and he knows this is just her way of getting him back.

Hope might be looking for a way to get Tony back but her plans backfire and she ends up in a really real, really scary version of the joke she was pulling.

The exact reason for said break up is never really made clear. She loved him. He loved her. He told her he saw the real her. And then BAM dumped? The plot-line for this book was as holey as the case the cops were building against Tony.

This town was crazy and creepy. And it was so sad to see that the thousands of people who were 'looking for Hope were really just looking for their 15 minutes of fame. I admit what Hope did was very wrong. But what her stain-in-the-underpants-of-society parents did... that was beyond words.

In the end, I found that I really enjoy Hannah Jayne's books but they are very simplistic mysteries that I can read in two or three hours and then move on. They never stay with me long. They are just fun in the moment. I will continue to read her books but if you are looking for some quickie mystery books then I highly suggest giving her a try.

Overall, I gave the book 3.5/5 stars.

This took things to a new depth of revenge. ​Not all is what it seems, because while Tony has dome some very wrong things, so has Hope. Even worse, all these folks are just down right jerks. I kept hoping for some redeeming factors, but they are sadly lacking in many areas. It does cover issues that teens need to have a good grip about, things that are wrong no matter what and no-one should do what happened in this book.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free volition.

This is an interesting premise, and I liked the 'twist.' However, I didn't really like Hope at all, and Tony was only passably better. Hope was so incredibly self-centered and thoughtless. And Tony was pretty immature. All in all, I didn't want to spend much time with either character, which meant I didn't care much about their story. Hope, especially, turned me off to her to the point that I didn't care at all what happened to her. Just not my kind of book, I'd say.

I have read a few books by Hannah Jayne before and am finding her books are usually entertaining, an easy read, and an intriguing plot line. The Revenge followed the same line. The story follows Tony as he deals with the repercussions of a breakup with one of the most popular and semi-famous girls in school. A civil break up turns into a huge ordeal when Hope goes missing after an angry Tony shares her personal location on the internet. Being a face in entertainment, it would seem stalkers came out of the woodwork.

I was torn between who I was cheering for in this story and who I was upset at most. Jayne has a way of writing characters where you feel really passionate about them. I felt really passionate about my dislike for Hope. She was your average spoiled rotten, privileged girl. She felt she deserved everything she wanted, and heaven forbid anyone who didn't align with her idea of what that was. When she didn't get her way she acted out and we saw the repercussions of this play out through the entire book. Tony was the boy next door who got hung up with the wrong people and ended up taking hits for it.

The writing was clear and concise and the timeline flowed smoothly throughout the entire book. The Revenge was almost like two stories woven into one. You had the upfront story of what is happening with Tony and the investigation into a missing Hope. Then you have Hope's story playing in the background. While it jumped back and forth, it wasn't chopping and the swapping happened at times when you kind of needed to know what was happening on the other side. Jayne through in a huge twist about halfway through, which upped the suspense and mystery of the whole situation.

My biggest upset and possibly only upset about The Revenge was the ending. I felt like there was no closure. It came to a very abrupt end after a high intensity moment. The story never really ended, it just kind of left you hanging with what you think would have happened next. I was not a fan of that. I like the end of mysteries because its ties up all those little lose ends and solves the mystery, whether it be a happy or sad ending. This story didn't do that for me. Had the ending been different, I would have been able to rate this a little higher. A good book though and I'll continue picking up Hannah Jayne's books in the future.

The Revenge by Hannah Jayne (July 2017)
What happens when you're going out with the smartest, most beautiful, most privileged girl in the school and then you realise you don't like her superficiality and dump her? Well first she disses you in front of all your friends and makes you a laughing stock... so what do you do then? Well that's when you take extreme measures that set a whole other set of things in motion and when this girl disappears you don't know what to do.
The Revenge explores the concept of relationships gone wrong and the idea that an impulsive action can lead to disastrous and life-threatening events. The Revenge explores the glitzy world of small town celebrity and offsets it against genuine hurt and fear and human emotion and in and among that Hannah Jayne slips in a few well placed twists to keep us on our toes. A great read!

I hate doing this but let me pull up the podium for a moment. There has been a Twitter drama storm over this book, which honestly, I had no idea about until I saw the Goodreads backlash. All the anger. All the comments about fetishizing doxing (researching and putting personal information about people without their consent on the internet as a form of bullying, revenge, etc.) and stalking, and further, being misogynistic. Some readers have even one starred or completely blacklisted the book because of this commentary.

Going into this book, I had no knowledge of this and read the story for what it was without specifically looking for these characteristics. Here’s what I thought:

My thoughts as I read were all over the place. At first, I was impressed. I loved the direction the story was taking. You have two characters. Both are flawed, they’re pretty terrible people. Hope, because she completely humiliated a guy-who broke up with her amiably-in front of the entire school, and Tony, because he retaliated by putting all of her info on the internet, signing her up for embarrassing products like diapers and rash cream, etc., and went even further by putting her on adult dating sites and sharing her location. They both are the worst, but what Tony did is not only horrible, it’s extremely dangerous. Initially it seems like the author is going to take that route. That she’s going to show how deadly doxing can be, how people regard it as a joke or a prank and it can have real, horrific consequences (abduction, murder, stalking, etc.). I was internally cheering because we NEED that book. In a time where everything is so easily accessible through social media, privacy is crucial. Doxing is NOT in any way, shape or form, especially as it is portrayed in the book, acceptable. I was pounding through the pages because I had to know what happened to her. She may be a terrible person but no one deserves being abducted or whatever happened to her because her ex was a jerk. The adrenaline was high, I was flipping along and then at around 40% the author made a choice.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a huge advocate for author’s choice. You want to kill off your main character, go ahead, it’s your story, whatever. But in this case, it absolutely destroyed what was building and how important doxing is as a crime/issue. Totally undermined and pretty much negated. Even by the end of the story, no remorse, no lesson learned, just oh, maybe I shouldn’t have done that ha ha. Not even lemme tell the police about this. NOTHING. Completely infuriating. And I kind of see why people got mad about it. A tool that was only examined at surface value AND dismissed. I don’t get it. But author’s choice. Meh.

So at this point, there’s a POV change that turns the story on its head and IT WILL MAKE YOU RAGE. What a shameful, rude, ruthless person. The level of destruction to get revenge. I mean, too far. But you do see this kind of whacked out stuff in the news so not entirely off base. At first, I hated this POV swapping. I was already irate about the destruction of the doxing didacticism but then it changed. A plot twist. A hard, heavy, terrifying one. But still not deserved. 100% NOT. These sections were terrifying and nauseating and all sorts of wrong. I truly felt scared for Hope. The argument is that it gets a little Gone Girl, but I don’t think so. It definitely diverts from that path. It was not predictable. While some parts were, especially after all the hateful slander about Hope, you kind of expected the initial twist, but by the end, nope, nope, nope. I was absolutely floored by the despicable actions of these people, I mean, seriously.

I didn’t really like or sympathize with Tony. Nor with Hope until the end. They weren’t likable people. They weren’t even that interesting, but the plot itself was and that’s what kept me reading.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the read. As for the misogyny comments, there were derogatory and degrading comments from both men and women in the story.

This book was not for me. It is setup like a thriller and has important messages behind it but didn't work for me.

Revenge....what a word. This book is one that stays with you. I didn't expect to be this engrossed in this book

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for a copy of the eARC in exchange for a fair review.


*** Disclaimer I requested this book months ago and was unaware of any controversy surrounding it until I logged into to do this review. So I am just going to address what I saw from some of the reviews. First off I didn't know what doxing was until reading other reviews, but having just literally read this book, the author is making light of this she is shining light on it and how potentially dangerous as well as fame. She address stalking and obsession as well. Lastly I don't agree with the choices Tony made, but given that he is a teen and he was humiliated and that is the way current young people address thing it's actually a really plausible scenario.***



Tony has recently broken up with Holly the star of the school. He did it privately and he thought everything was good until he goes back to school and she reads all his private emails and letters to her. In a moment of anger Tony decides to sign her up for everything from Tinder to whatever, and he makes her location and phone number known.



Then a day later he receives a call from Holly and he thinks she is being dramatic until she screams. In a panic he rushes over to her house and finds the phone, but he doesn't tell anyone because he is sure that she getting revenge on him. Then she is reported missing and everything blows up. Tony becomes suspect number one and things continue to spiral out of control. Another girl goes missing and her body is found the next day.



I am still pondering how I feel about the ending, because whew this was a ride. I have read almost everything Hannah Jayne has written so I knew this would be good and I loved it and hated it. I have seen some hate it because of the Gone Girl comparisons and I get where they are coming from. I loved Gone Girl, but I hated the characters. I liked Tony, I thought he was stupid and made stupid choices and he paid for them.



On the other hand I think Hannah brilliantly shines light on today's culture, by having Tony doxing Holly, she shows how people act today. I didn't agree with it or like any of it, but I see this constantly Twitter is a humiliation show these days with people dragging everyone into whatever current problem they have with something. I think it's gross which is why I am not on twitter very much these days which is also how I missed all the controversy surrounding this book.



I don't understand the need to publicly shame and humiliate people that is so prevalent these days. On top of it with social media controlling everyone's lives it has also allowed people to indulge their crazy. When I was a teen you had to stalk and humiliate people the old fashioned way now people stalk Facebooks, Twitters and everything else, locations are posted and it's actually pretty easy to know where a person is and what they are doing. So safety is out the window and in a twisted way Hannah shows that in The Revenge. I think what Tony did was crap, and what all the other characters did was crap too, but it is kind of the norm today despite what illusions we might cling too.

If you can suspend your disbelief, then this book is actually quite entertaining and shines a light on an interesting subject matter, at least to me, which is the self entitled attitude that seems to be so prevalent in teens and YA.

Of course, this book is more about "suspense" then a look at today's generation, but it says a lot about how many YA's think today.

Having said that, I doubt the author was really thinking about this while crafting this story. She did manage to create two very different main characters - neither are particularly likable and I especially did not like Tony who was, let's just say it, a dumb character. What would you do if you found your ex girlfriend's cell, on the night she disappears? of course, stash it in your car (dumb move number 1) and keep calling it in the hopes that Hope will answer (really???? dumb move number 2) and then spend the entire time walking around like a zombie, pretending that life has not changed and make sure to never actually finish one sentence you start and I mean NEVER finish a thought or a sentence. This guy was making so many dumb moves that I doubt anyone would feel bad for him.

On the other hand, he had a point about Hope and HER motivation, which involves being a self entitled brat, who doesn't think further than her nose (maybe people might be pissed at your dumb move?).....

There are a few interesting turns in this story and those are what actually made this book interesting and a fun read for me. The writing is fine and while I would have loved a more in depth look at the "whys" in this book (or at least a better understanding of the main characters), I finished this one in a few days and was happy to have read it.

Review being posted on my blog 6-30-17

Last year I read Twisted by Hannah Jayne, and really liked it. So when I saw she had another novel I didn't even bother reading what the synopsis was about. Now I wish I had.

"They were: desperate, Fame hungry. So rolled up in their own agenda that they had no idea that Hope's high school revenge plan had taken on a life of its own. That their own daughter was in danger while they rolled film. For the first time in a long time, I felt sorry for Hope."

Hope since she was conceived has been a rating booster to her parents on their morning TV show. Every big and small thing that has happened in her life has been filmed and broadcasted to millions. So when she meets Tony a guy who doesn't care about her parents or the benefits he might get while dating her she falls for him. Fast forward a few months and they've broken up. Hope has made him look horribly in the public eye and he is upset. He wants to get revenge on her, and he does so in a drastic and dangerous way in today's world.

"She was hope and I did love her and I didn't want anything bad to happen."

At first he started off small, signing her up to get things sent her door, and while I thought it was petty wasn't that bad; then things go from petty to just plain dangerous in two seconds when he shares her personal info on dating sites and even her location. I should have stopped reading at this point, but I had to know if he was ever going to get caught.


Very bad things end up happening to Hope, because of things that both her and Tony did. It's an awful and scary situation to be in and how the whole town was just accusing Tony without, evidence, because he was the ex really bothered me. Yes he played a part in it, but there were very obviously signs that something else was going on as well.

"I would get out of this house if it killed me. I would get back to my parents, to Tony, to my school. I would survive."

Overall I really didn't like this book. It's everything that shouldn't be done during a break-up, but because we do live in such a technology fueled world, It's also something that can happen in a blink of an eye. Things get taken to far way to quickly nowadays, and while I don't agree with the things that happened in this book. I do think it is important to show that sharing someones private information in this way, has consequences and those consequences can lead to people dying. Tony, Hope and their friends are not likable people. They make mistakes that have very real life consequences that they all might not be able to come back from.

I did give this a higher rating than most because of those reasons though. We need to address technology and information sharing to teenagers, because when we don't they don't realize the consequences until they are already in trouble.

This book honestly left me speechless. Like most YA thrillers I hated, the only credit I can give it is that it was addicting...and that's basically it. The characters were completely forgettable, the writing wasn't that good, and it was just...weird? I literally can't put into words how much this didn't make sense. And the ending was SO OPEN. Like, it just ended, and when I saw that there were acknowledgements, I flipped back to see if I had missed something because that couldn't possibly have been the end. But, nope, that was it. Basically, this was the poor man's version of Gone Girl. Like, a REALLY poor man's version of Gone Girl.

“The Revenge” was a really intense and disturbing novel about two teenagers, Hope and Tony, told in alternating perspectives between the two. Tony and Hope were dating until recently, when Tony broke up with her. Their break-up was not amicable, with Hope responding by reading his love letters and poems in front of the school and Tony responding with doxing. Hope is a media darling- her parents host a popular morning show- and her life has been on air since she was little. Tony comes from a less wealthy but happy family- however, it was the wealth difference that led to him breaking up with Hope. Neither of them seems to express much regret over their actions or empathy throughout.

We witness the events of the synopsis pretty quickly, where Tony has doxed Hope, and Hope called him to get him to take her personal information offline and then he hears a struggle before she cuts out. He finds her phone in a ditch by her house, broken (and of course, just stashes it in his car). The next day, he finds out Hope is missing, but he is convinced that she is faking it all- keeping this assertion even after the police begin to investigate. Instead of doing anything logical, he keeps all pertinent information from the police (her phone, doxing, etc.) and consistently impedes the investigation.

I found the overall story very frustrating as far as Tony is concerned. He constantly makes himself into a villain with the doxing, adamant belief that Hope is doing this to herself, and impeding the investigation. The other main characters are equally hard to like, including the police, sleazy lawyer, Hope herself, and Hope’s friends, especially Everly who has some pretty evil sides. Perhaps the only likable character is Tony’s sweet younger sister. The plotline with Hope takes some pretty awful twists and turns, and it is really disturbing to read- to the extent that I am surprised this passes as a YA book.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the book is the ending. I don’t want to spoil it, but it seems like it took too many twists and turns until we get to a place where none of the characters get justice for the wrongs they have committed and/or the wrongs committed against them (e.g. the doxing, obstruction of justice). The end is pretty abrupt, so we are left with a bit of a cliffhanger, and maybe they would get more justice if it is carried out. There is some pretty serious stuff in this book, and while it is not treated as a joke/lightly, we also don’t witness the way it should be handled or any of the main characters really deal with the events in any kind of constructive way. Some of the scenes are the stuff of nightmares (psychological and physical abuse as well as murder), and I don’t know if I would recommend this book to anyone.

While the writing is decent and the book moves fast, it is hard to empathize with characters who have no remorse or empathy and to really get much from the novel overall. Please note that I received an ARC from the publisher through netgalley. All opinions are my own.