I remember being blown away by We Were Liars. Lockhart was experimenting, pushing the boundaries of what can be done in teen fiction. And when I realized that this book, too, played with nontraditional formatting I got excited. Here's an author doing new and exciting things, I thought. The reality is less thrilling than I'd hoped. Yes, the story is told in reverse. And its easy enough to follow. In spite of knowing how it will ultimately end, there is interest and intrigue along the way, a few surprising twists. All of which tells me just how masterful a writer Lockhart truly is. I just didn't love this book the way I did Liars. It's clever and worth a read, just didn't connect with me in that real, visceral way.

A reverse bildungsroman may seem like a bit of an oxymoron, but that is exactly what e. lockhart gifts to readers with her new young adult novel, Genuine Fraud. By manipulating this predominately Victorian art form, lockhart tells a fascinating tale peppered with subtle, but powerful, commentary on gender politics and enough nefarious elements to delight fans of crime fiction.

Told in reverse chronological order, Genuine Fraud’s chapters countdown from eighteen to one – each with a clear calendar designation and location marker to help orient readers. The chapters themselves proceed in typical forward movement, so in the end Genuine Fraud has a bit of a chain-link effect with the story doubling back on itself before moving forward again until ultimately, a brief coda brings the whole novel to an end. Trust me, this sounds much more complicated than it feels when reading it.

At its core, Genuine Fraud is the story of how Jule West Williams became the person she is – particularly in how it relates to the parallel life of Imogen Sokoloff. As readers journey with Jule through the various stages of her development, the legitimacy of her methods begins to resonate. To say much about the criminal elements within the story would be too much of a spoiler here, but certainly the title alone hints at possible plot paths and the reader is justly rewarded.

If one pretends to be something for long enough, at what point does that act become the reality? This is the theme that will resonate longest with the reader at the conclusion of this relatively short novel. We Were Liars still remains my favorite of e. lockhart’s novels, but it is possible to see the emergence of recurring ideas within her output: identity and feminism, at the forefront, which will have readers salivating for her next book.

There is nothing simple about Genuine Fraud. The structure is complex, the motivations are complicated, and the payoff from both teen and adult readers is multifaceted. There is much to appreciate here; fans of crime fiction authors like Megan Abbott, Jessica Knoll, and Gillian Flynn will find themselves in comfortable territory.

I was pretty excited to read this book due to all the hype surrounding her book We Were Liars. I have not yet read We Were Liars and I probably still will despite my not-love of this book. That being said…unfortunately this book just did not do it for me. I ended up giving it a 2 out of 5 stars due to being interested enough in the book to finish it but that’s about it. This story is told backwards. You start with the second to last chapter and go down to the first chapter…then the very last chapter you read is the conclusion. Due to this, I feel like I was able to predict too much in the story so that nothing was really shocking by the time I got to it. The characters, in my opinion, were just boring. There was so much detail surrounding these characters that I just didn’t care about. Even the main character had a lackluster personality that honestly just got annoying after a while. The writing itself wasn’t anything special as well. Then, after all of this buildup I feel that the ending was very disappointing and unsatisfying.