less than impressed

Well, the thing is, I was reading Ice Like Fire, the second book of the Snow Like Ashes trilogy and I wasn't feeling it, I was really in the mood for a mystery and murder reading and luckily I had this arc on my Kindle for some time already, so I thought it would be a good idea to read it. It wasn't what I expected, at all, but still I want to talk about them in detail, first I want to emphasize the writing style, which is pretty easy to read

I will leave here below the Goodreads synopsis for the book so that you know what it's about

“One small, northern community. Two girls gone -- one missing, the other dead. A riveting coming-of-age debut young adult novel for fans of Everything I Never Told You and All the Bright Places.
Sixteen-year-old Helen Commanda is found dead just outside Thunder Creek, Ontario. Her murder goes unremarked, except for the fact that it may shed light on the earlier disappearance of Chloe Shaughnessy. Chloe is beautiful, rich and white. Helen is plain, and from the reservation. They had nothing in common except that they were teenage girls from an unforgiving small town. Only Chloe's best friend Jenny Parker knows exactly how unforgiving, but she's keeping some dangerous secrets of her own.
Jenny begins looking for answers about Helen's life and death, trying to understand larger questions about her town and her best friend. But what can a teenage girl really accomplish where adults have failed? And how much is Jenny actually complicit in a conspiracy of silence?”


I started enjoying it a lot, especially the mystery vibe that is handled in the book is very good and enthralling, but then Jenny, our main character, begins to have all these completely ridiculous and meaningless attitudes. First her way of dealing with loss is the rarest, I've read that some people believe that is her way of dealing with it, but I don't agree, her behavior as if nothing matters I thought it was absurd.

I understand that she really wanted to find her friend and solve what was going on, but suddenly she started to flee almost from the police as if they were the enemy, then she passes like 60% of the book with her super hot guy, doing basically nothing relevant and the other percentage passes by looking for her friend putting herself in danger without any sense and hiding very important details from the police, because she actually thinks she's protecting her friend, I mean, WHAT ?, they want to find her!.In moments of desperation I understand that you can forget to comment a really important things, but she was hiding that from the police because she wanted to do it, which only made research even more difficult.


This was crazy for me one of the most absurd characters I've read, and I really hate talking this way about a creation that someone did with effort and love, but it hasn't worked for me. Jenny is the typical beautiful and rich girl who thinks she knows everything about life because she get drugged a couple of times and then she think she's smart enough to solve a crime on her own, but she just makes a mess, and that's all she's been for me

On the other hand, I could see how the author wanted to touch important issues like abuse, bullying, indifference, racism, and depression, I appreciate that and I want to highlight it, even so it isn't a book that going to stay with me

Anyway, I would try another book of the author, because I think her writing style is nice and maybe with the development of other types of characters more deep and complex could hook me more and I would end up liking me more her book

Summing up, is a great idea for a mystery plot but the characters are flat and their actions don't make sense most of the time

I wasn't a big fan of the book, which is sad because I really wanted to enjoy it but it wasn't for me.
The writing was a bit bland and didn't add much or impressed me. Also I was quite confused at first with the narrator, and I found the "romance" to be so insta love.
Also it had some well known YA tropes we're all familiar about, and even though it was fast, I think it wasn't mindblowing.

The vague synopsis of this suggested a rather tried but interesting enough plot: two girls gone - one missing, the other dead. In actuality this was so much more than the straight-up thriller it was packaged as.

The central plot circled around the disappearance of these two teenage girls but this was merely used as a catalyst to spark a bigger debate about larger social problems and the current political climate. Everyday racism was called out and the author did not hold back when confronting triggering and dark subject matters.

One of the missing girls is Chloe - beautiful, rich, and most importantly (as far as the media and the police are concerned) white. The other is Helen - a 'native' of the reservation. When Helen's body is discovered the police seem to be unable or unwilling to further investigate her murder. Chloe's disappearance, however, is still a source of constant contention in this isolated Canadian community, with constant vigils, searches and discussions about the missing teen still being held.

Chloe's best friend, Jenny, seems to be the only one to notice the difference in treatment the two girls have received and, despite her close bond with the one missing girl, she spends her day's since her best friend's disappearance investigating the other forgotten female.

This is a very slow-moving plot, but this is what I loved about the novel. The central storyline, put forward in the synopsis, does not expand or progress for much of the novel and, instead, important political topics are discussed. The author, it seems, cleverly used this fictional scenario to highlight some very important discrimination very dominant in today's society.

Eye-opening is the words I would use to describe this. There wasn't so much an obvious disregard for those with colour; it was as though the white-skinned members of society were not even aware of the casual racism they inflicted everyday. The members of the reserve, in retaliation, often harboured a hatred or mistrust of their white neighbours because of this.

It was interesting to be given an insight into the opposing sides of this small community and to see the impact the treatment they have lived their lives with has affected how they, in turn, confront the heart-breaking scenario of the the two missing girls.

The other subject matter this book challenges is sexism and slut-shaming. Chloe, before her disappearance, was involved in a multitude of scenarios that ruined her reputation with her peers and caused them to view her as less than human as a judgement for her supposed misdeeds. The truth mattered little when there was drama to be caused and gossip to be shared. This is a moralistic story on how comments and a falsely perceived image of someone can damage one's own self-worth.

Two highly triggering subject matters were tackled here and both, in my opinion, treated with the sensitivity yet hard-hitting realism they deserved. The plot of this story can be a source of contention with readers expecting an easy read or a fast-paced thriller, but this book deserves to be read by all because of the important issues it highlights. Relevant and impactful - this book delivers on both fronts.

Two girls. About the same age. Both missing. And then one is found dead.

Nobody seems to pay that much attention to Helen’s death, except those people hoping it may somehow be related to Chloe’s disappearance. Because, after all, Chloe’s the important one. Helen’s just a poor girl from the reservation. Chloe’s rich, white, and popular. So of course people are going to be more concerned about her. At least that’s the way Jenny sees it. And it bothers her.

It bothers her so much that she begins to dig deeper, hoping to uncover the truth about what happened to Helen. At the same time, she has to face the truth about what happened to Chloe and the part she played in it.

This was a good, solid story for me. The suspense is there, but it also has a very humanistic approach. The author delves deeply into societal divides, across races and classes and even high school cliques. A good read!

This book was awesome. I really enjoyed the plot and the who done it! I was amazed by her will to go on and her bravery throughout this story

Not particularly a book of my liking. Not badly written

The Good
This book is set up to teach readers a few lessons, and that’s done well. The disparity between how the police treat white people and Natives in Canada is regularly referenced and examined. Slut shaming and rape are also explored, though rape is skirted around for much of the book. In the end, though, the book comes down firmly on the side of slut shaming being wrong and damaging and Native people in Canada being severely discriminated against. There were also passages where Jenny tried to explore her own identity as a white person, which while a little cringey were well-intentioned.

The Bad
The romance was very bad. Jenny and her love interest suddenly meet and start investigating Helen’s murder and then start making out for…no reason. I get that teenagers are hormonal or whatever, but it made no sense to me. I kept waiting for the love interest to end up having something to do with the disappearances, in the hope that would explain why he took such a sudden and random interest in Jenny and the missing/dead girls.

The mystery was also very boring. There was no sense of tension (except for that weird scene in a trailer park) and the resolution of the mystery was not surprising or interesting.

The Verdict
This book sets out to fulfill a particular purpose, and it succeeds at doing that, but leaves behind other important aspects such as plot and character development.

Very well written, engaging story. A thought provoking young adult read.

*I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review*

Jenny Parker's best friend has gone missing and she is at a loss. Constantly being harrassed by the police and on the edge of school, she feels lost and unsure of what to do. When she meets Tom, she feels like perhaps she has a person who could help her navigate these treacherous waters.

Unfortunately, there was just so much to be desired from this book. I convinced myself not to throw in the towel, and while it got better around 60% into the story, I was never really convinced that I was reading something that should have been very realistic fiction. The character development was lacking and the story just felt forced.

Jenny Parker doesn’t really fit in anywhere in her tiny town in northern Ontario. About as unremarkable as someone can be, Jenny isn’t particularly pretty, smart, or talented in any way. And her one defining feature that everyone knows is that she’s Chloe Shaughnessy’s best friend. Chloe is pretty, vibrant, and outgoing. With her family well off, Chloe knows she is destined for greater things than what is given in Thunder Creek. But after a terrible incident at a party, Chloe’s life starts to spiral out of control and shifts to the worst year she’s ever experienced. When Chloe disappears, Jenny is suddenly the talk of the town after being the last one to see her. But more is going on in the so-called sleepy town of Thunder Creek when a few weeks later a dead Native girl is found in the woods—and the police don’t seem to care. In this coming-of-age story, Jenny is stretched and challenged as she starts to investigate Helen’s murder and discovers how little she knew about her town. And all the while she is pressured by the police about her silence on Chloe’s whereabouts the night she disappeared. It seems Thunder Creek is a dangerous place for a teenage girl.

This book is focused largely on real issues. Although the plot lends an interesting backdrop, I really feel that Jenny’s experiences and growth is the real feature of this book rather than plot progression (though there is that as well!) Being an American, I honestly had no idea what life is like in the parts of Canada this book is set in and I loved becoming more educated while being able to read a fiction book.

Jenny was a really interesting character for me. Though she wasn’t particularly likeable in any way, I really felt like I got to know her through the writing style and through her actions in the book. Although some readers may find her behavior odd and un-relatable, I like that Jenny portrays that grief doesn’t have to look a certain way. She shows the other side of human reaction in that she decides to take action and stay busy with investigating the other girl’s murder rather than sitting around and worrying about the disappearance of her best friend. Jenny’s denial and many coping mechanisms, including her spontaneous relationship with her brooding classmate Tom, were a large part of the book and I found it to be extremely intriguing. Jenny is a very complex character yet she was kept simplistic in her portrayal throughout the book so she never became overwhelming.

The plot was rather slow but like I mentioned before, I don’t think the plot is really the focus of this book. I certainly enjoyed following Jenny on her journey to investigate Helen’s murder and the people that she met along the way. I personally had no idea that there was a race issue in Canada like there is in America and I like that Helen’s family brings more attention to Canada’s First Nations peoples and their struggles. Although I wish that the book had had more of a solid conclusion, I do understand why the author chose to end the book the way she did. The portrayal of how life really is runs rampant in this book to the end and, just like life, it was just a bit frustrating.

In the wake of 13 Reasons Why, this book continues with hitting the hard issues with teenagers. With themes of bullying, depression, rejection, and racism, this book isn’t shy by any means. If you can handle these themes, along with rape (not depicted), suicide mentions, and murder, you’ll want to pick this book up. Take a look at what it’s like to live in the North, and what it means to be human.

I’m going to tell you right away you will either love or hate this book.

MacKenzie Common hits many of the taboo subjects that need to be talked about in depth until they stop being so prevalent yet ignored in modern society. Sexist attitudes, racist beliefs, bullying and rape all make it into this book but the attitudes towards the difference between rape and consensual sex misses the mark. I admit to being a bit sensitive towards this latter part since I just finished watching the Netflix series based on 13 Reasons Why.

I did like getting an introduction to Canada’s First Nation’s people since I had no previous knowledge of them and appreciated the careful research the author put in to showcasing their treatment accurately. I have to admit I also found it fascinating because all I’ve ever heard is positive things about the Canadian culture to the point that their graciousness towards others is often the butt of jokes. Naively it never occurred to me they too would be dealing with racist attitudes towards a whole culture of people.

Unfortunately though your emotions don’t really get a chance to dig in and become affected at the right pace because the writing doesn’t hit the tension levels expected in a mystery. Often the important parts got buried in sentence structure, details and phrases that weren’t needed so your attention drifts. Jenny, a main character, needs an attitude adjustment and was hard to care about. The sappy, completely unrealistic romance between Jenny and Tom didn’t help either.

I still haven’t decided whether I liked or hated this book. There was the skeleton for something amazing, a great story that needs to be told, a beautiful setting, a rich history, an awesome country but it disappeared among the negatives.

Common also needs a different main character or at least to write her better because I kept hoping Jenny would end up murdered just to get rid of her; Jenny sabotaged this story.

In a tiny community in Northern Ontario Chloe Shaughnessy goes missing. Not long after a native girl, Helen, is murdered. Chloe was Jenny’s best friend, and Jenny might know something about the night Chloe went missing. The cops are desperate to find out. They’ve put Helen on the back burner to focus on Chloe’s disappearance, an act that disturbs Jenny. She decides to investigate the murder herself while keeping her lips sealed about what she knows.

The Lives of Desperate Girls touches on the very real issue of police ignoring missing or murdered indigenous women in Canada. It also covers other serious topics, but this is its main focus. Almost no one cares that Helen is missing. She’s just a native girl. Chloe was special. Despite being Chloe’s best friend Jenny wants to help Helen too.

As a protagonist, Jenny is good, kind, brave and slightly bland. She’s almost too good and caring to believe while also doing terrible things. She does stupid, reckless things and never sees a consequence and they’re cast as the right thing to do. She does very wrong things but because she did them they were honourable. Everything she does is cast in a noble light even when it’s a shitty thing to do. Tom is much more interesting but the book would have been better off without the romance.

The romance in the book was thrilling and at least almost realistic. Tom and Jenny feel strange together, and they just sort of happen with no real rhyme or reason. The ending had the potential to feel real and good but that was tossed aside. Jenny and Tom meet in a dire situation in the heat of the moment and even then their relationship seems a little ridiculous. Nevermind how rare it is for high schoolers to appreciate those a grade beneath them, Jenny and Tom have never spoken before suddenly being in love.

Despite those two complaints I really did love the story. I was caught up in the mystery of what happened to Chloe and Helen. Wanting to know what secret Jenny knew. Were the two girls connected in some way? Common explores racism, rape culture, slut shaming and the indifference that surrounds them. It’s definitely nice to see these depicted in a Canadian setting when so many like to forget that there are issues in every country.

It was a bit slow-paced for a mystery, and the ending didn’t really satisfy me but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

*Trigger warning: Murder, death and rape*

The Lives of Desperate Girls follows Jenny who is dealing with the disappearance of her best friend at around the same time a sixteen-year-old local girl called Helen turns up dead. Jenny had never met Helen, but is instantly drawn in by her murder and the person that she was before the attack. Jenny slowly

Admittedly, I had to actually read a synopsis of this book before I wrote this book, even though I have literally just finished it, because I had no idea what the main character's name was. Helen and Chloe felt more like main characters even though it wasn't from their perspective at all. Although, perhaps this is down to my exhausted state rather than any reflection of the book at all.

I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it. I felt it drew some very important points on racism and the way Natives are treated in the town than the local white girls. I felt those aspects were particularly interesting to read about, whilst saddening at the same time. It's easy to brush the points off as fiction and to think the fact the police are willing to look into Chloe's disappearance, but not Helen's murder is just an interesting plot point, but not real life - but sadly it is real life in some parts. I did find the storyline surrounding Chloe's disappearance to be slightly predictable as we were dropped various subtle hints and I put 2+2 together. The romance didn't particularly interest me in this book at all, although it felt realistic since Jenny was a lot more into Tom than he was into her, rather than the typical immediately falling in love story that we see a lot in YA.

The themes within the book of rape, slut shaming and bullying were handled with care. However, whilst the racism theme brought alight things that Jenny had never previously thought about before, it also made her seem incredibly naive and a bit stupid, even at only sixteen-years-old. Her willingness to know more about Helen and the struggles the Native community encountered didn't necessarily show racism being dealt with in a useful way by Jenny. She was fairly rude to the police officers when asking why a white girl was getting all the police attention and a Native wasn't, but that's as far as her anger went. I feel that someone who was as curious and shocked as she was, would have had a stronger reaction to the different treatment based on race. But that's just my thoughts on the matter.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it as it was beautifully written and painted a vivid picture throughout.

A sixteen year old girl, Helen Commanda from Thunder Creek, was murdered. Her mangled body seemingly dumped in the snow. You would think this would be front page news. But it isn't. Because Helen isn't the shining bright, and white, star that Chloe is from a rich community. Helen is a plain, native girl. And Chloe is missing. Her best friend Jenny is crushed by the news, pushing those around her away and determined to find out where Chloe is. The problem, or perhaps good thing for us, is, Jenny has some secrets. And as a reader, you are so utterly determined to know what they are. This propelled me through the story, which is fast-moving anyway, and kept me interested.

What I really like is that this author doesn't shy away from some big issues like this; in particular I like that they have explored how accountable Jenny is for having secrets which she could have divulged to the police. The question of keeping things quiet, whilst not being the guilty party, was interesting and I liked this part of the story a lot.

Equally, I liked how observant Jenny is. At first this came across as quite a blunt, too descriptive writing style but actually, it really helped me to understand Jenny a little bit better; her voice wasn't exactly likeable, but it was frank, and this made her interesting. Towards the beginning of the book she is a really reliable narrator, offering lots of detail which helped to build up a picture of what was happening. Her character became interesting to me when she commented on how we look at people without them noticing, and how this denies them the chance of covering their true self. It's an interesting concept, whilst a bit superficial, and really made me think. Sometimes throughout the story she had these incredible moments of clarity which caught my attention.

However, sometimes I found Jenny a little difficult to connect with. Jenny to me isn't especially likeable. She is quite focused on the superficial parts of life. How beautiful someone is, how plain her mother is, how she wished her mother would be beautiful and rich, how cool she looks to others. And these things are quite frustrating, and upsetting, concepts to read through because it would be nice to believe at sixteen that teenagers have more about them than this. Equally, Jenny makes a few poor choices, such as immediately trusting someone with a bad reputation or accepting drugs because she didn't want to seem unpopular to the boy who offered them to her. These things I found difficult to accept - I prefer characters with ambition, drive and something within them that gives them their own voice; their own ability to say no and believe what they want to believe. Jenny was a weak character in this regard. However, I don't always think that an unlikable character is necessarily a bad thing; sometimes this seemed almost deliberate. And an unlikable character, for me, sometimes adds strength to the emotions the story brings out in me - it's powerful to hate a character and their actions. I think maybe the author actually wanted to portray how Jenny had become weak because of the grief she was feeling for her friend. Equally, I think these things are probably quite an honest reflection of what it can be to be a teenager, but sadly for the most part Jenny came across as vapid and vacuous, rather than complex enough to really pull this off. For the most part I found her character a bit upsetting.

For me this book was a little bit of a struggle, but I like the concepts and I think there is something to be said for being brave enough to challenge big issues, especially with an atypical character. I'm just not sure it was really for me.

I had a hard time figuring out how to rate this book. On one hand as a Canadian it is so important for books like this to exist, on the other hand I felt that it tried to do too much. It isn't very often that an author puts spotlight on the widespread (yet under acknowledged) mistreatment of First Nations people. This on its own was an amazing thing to see especially as a Canadian. However the delivery sometimes felt clunky, there were parts of severe info dumping that kind of took away from the flow of the book. I felt it would have been better served to have had Jenny discover the information the way she did with the Starlight tours scene rather than looking it up online and having it thrown at the reader. It would have had more impact coming from character driven interaction rather than just being thrown out there. I did enjoy reading the book as a whole especially given the general content being something that the book world desperately needs to read. The simple idea of a country as a whole sweeping an entire group of people under the rug and hardly anyone gives notice is horrible. It is absolutely something very important that we as a people need to bring attention to and this book does that fairly well. I occasionally felt that the narrative lacked flow and seemed to just have things happen for the sake of it (such as Jenny's "romance") and the story would have probably benefitted without that there. A platonic relationship would have served the same purpose as the romantic one. As well the mystery of Chloe wasn't very mysterious, there was plenty of clues to determine the truth of the situation from very early on. I appreciate that the author went into how cruel high school can be and the devastating effects it can have on people, but I think if the focus was on either the First Nations people or the high school cruelty rather than trying to do both it would have flowed much better. Overall I loved the content but felt that the delivery wasn't everything it could have been.

**Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THE LIVES OF DESPERATE GIRLS in exchange for my honest review**

The Canadian police are frantically searching for Jenny's white friend Chloe while all but ignoring missing, then found dead classmate and Native Helen. Jenny teens up with resident bad boy Tom to try to solve Helen's murder and hopefully in the process fund Chloe.

THE LIVES OF DESPERATE GIRLS is an example of a rich, multilayered plot gone wrong. First the positive. MacKenzie Common does a great job bringing Rape Culture, slut shaming, racial disparity in law enforcement, racism and sexism into the story. Jenny was a unique character.

Now the negative. When I read a mystery, I expect a quick pace the writing to be filled with tension. Common's tendency to tell rather than show, over-explain and her repeated use of passive verbs made the story drag while often dull. Jenny's narration called rape "sex" and slut shamed Chloe until nearly the end of the book when Jenny realizes and tells that the sex was actually rape. A better option would have been at least having Jenny question consent, if not have her the one who knew but couldn't stand up to the Rape Culture. Not having one character, even a minor one, recognize consent vs rape in 2017 is unconscionable.

I also never bought into why Jenny wasn't forthright with the police, but was willing to conduct her own investigation. The ending fizzled without a payoff.

Unfortunately, I don't recommend Common's well-intentioned story.