I couldn't get in to this book. I didn't like the characters and the plot just isn't for me unfortunately.

Those Girls by Lauren Saft

308 Pages
Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers, Poppy
Release Date: June 9, 2015

Fiction, New Adult, Sex, Drugs

Alexandra is a quiet young woman. She has never had a boyfriend and is still a virgin. She gains confidence after joining a garage band She secretly loves Drew, the boy down the street. Mollie and Alex have been friends since kindergarten. They always do everything together and tell each other everything. That is until Sam and their junior year. Everything changes, and not in a good way. Veronica is a transplant from New York. The twosome becomes a three some. Veronica is wild, has sex with all the guys, and is the town joke. She doesn’t care what people think. She lives life in the fast lane with absent parents.

The story takes place over the course of a school year. The characters are well developed, and it is written in the first-person point of view from different perspectives. This book has a lot of similarities with other mean girl stories. These girls are friends with complex feelings for each other. The book is classified as teen and young adult but considering the amount of sex and drug use, I would not recommend it as that. I think it would be better listed as a new adult.

I received this free eARC novel from NetGalley. This is my honest review.

This has been on my TBR pile for so long, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I really enjoyed the storyline and seeing the characters change throughout the story was a great character development. The plot was great and kept my attention. I'm glad I got the chance to read this and will be on the lookout for more in the future!

I really, really couldn't connect with any of the characters in this one. I wanted to like it, but I just didn't. I can't stand the mean girl hype and these girls were just awful. I was shaking my head the majority of the way through this. Don't recommend.

Here's the thing: I get what THOSE GIRLS by Lauren Saft was trying to do. This beyond raunchy young adult contemporary book was a combination Mean Girls and BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver, except much, much worse. If you'd like to read a book about three teenage girls being absolutely horrible to themselves, each other, and everyone with whom they come into contact, then perhaps you'd enjoy the plot. Yet I absolutely cannot recommend this book. It is replete with racism, fatphobia, and the R-word. It marginalizes suicide. It glorifies eating disorders. It makes teenage girls think they need to bow to every desire their boyfriend has even if they don't consent. I could go on, but I'll stop there.

The only reason I read this entire book was because I did so in one day. Plus, I had hoped for a better outcome, and I was rooting for the Alex/Drew storyline because I'm a sucker for the friends to lovers trope. Yet the ending was repulsive for many reasons. This book would need a major facelift before I'd even consider recommending it to anyone.

0.5 stars

The premise drew me in, the execution left me lacking. I've enjoyed my fair share of YA books. I love seeing the "bad girls" redeeming themselves and I'm definitely all for girls not caring about what others might think of them, BUT this is not it. Throwing together every cliché character flaw you could find, along with every risky behavior teenagers are likely to face and adding curses like they are a main part of a sentence does not a "raw, honest, hilarious, and thought-provoking" story makes. Not a thought was provoked with this story except that I should stay away from the "Read Now' category in Netgalley. Where's the character development? These girls were the same immature, insecure and emotionally-stunted girls in the end as they were in the beginning. What lesson was there to learn from this story? Not a thing. Ultimately, Alex, Mollie and Veronica's thoughts were NOT necessarily "what goes on in the mind of a teenage girl". For the blurb to allude to all of this is very misleading to a potential reader, which is why I decided to leave a review.

I read this book a long time ago and never reviewed it, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but after seeing all the negative reviews here, I wanted to add a more positive one. I really, really enjoyed reading this book. As other reviews mentioned, the girls can be pretty awful to each other, but I think that's the point, isn't it? That's real life sometimes. A lot of people said they didn't finish the book, but if they had I think they would have seen that these girls are not all bad. They have real feelings just like everyone else. I really appreciated the authors frank, honest depictions of sexuality in the book. Sometimes teens have a lot of sex. Again, that's reality, and I did find myself connecting with Veronica's character.

The reason I enjoyed this book as much as I did, though, was the author's writing style. On a sentence level, I thought it was entertaining and insightful. Flipping through my copy, I see that I highlighted many, many lines. An example of a great one: "At this point, the old Veronica would have said something like, but sometimes it's good to be bad, but I refrained. That was old jock-screwing, tit-flashing drunkie Veronica. New Veronica, who dated smart, sensitive, literate, good-movie-liking, good-SAT-scoring guys like Drew, didn't revert to sexual banter for lack of witty, insightful things to say, right?" I just think this type of sharp writing is so great. Now that I've remembered how much I liked this book, I totally plan to read it again.

The book did not really work for me. I DNF'ed it. I wasn’t able to connect with any of the many characters in the book and I found myself putting down the book a lot because it was never really catching my attention

I hate doing this but this book was sadly not for me. I read a small amount and I just couldn't get into it. I don't know if it was a mood or the characters or what, but I just couldn't bring myself to read more. I wish there was a different result, but this one was just not for me.

I really didn't like this book. It was all really petty and just kind of dumb in my opinion. I think that I would have loved this had I read it back in middle school, but reading it in my late 20's I just can't bring myself to care.

I DNFed this book almost immediately. Between the unending info-dump at the beginning explaining to me how all the main characters became friends- like I don't know how friends work- and the inane dialogue, I was put off from the start. I can totally see what the author was trying to do, to turn the "unlikeable(cringe) mean girls" into a heartfelt story, but I've seen it done and I've seen it done way better. This book started out shallow and I didn't stick around long enough to see if it got any deeper.

I truly wanted to love this story. I really did. I was expecting a fast paced story about "Mean girls". And in a way, I truly got that story. But it was something else.

First of all, I don't really mind vulgar words in YA, especially if it's used in right way. The problem I had here was that all of the characters in this book were around 16-17 and they were supposed to be friends. Yet they called each other b/s words and meant them. The whole "friendship" really didn't exist here, Veronica, Mollie and Alex were just using each other against each other. Well, you might say Mollie and Alex had a thing but with Veronica around, it just turned into jealousy game.

Another problem I had was with what this book was trying to say. Yes, high school girls are cruel and mean and author has shown us in a way... but there are still boundaries. I don't think it was healthy to show these young readers that it was okay to do something harmful to your friend (that ending) and yet forgive them for it. BS.

The only thing I party enjoyed was romance - eventhough it might have been solved with little bit of communication.

I am afraid I cannot recommend this book to anyone (only if you want to get a good laugh).

Sorry. didn't love it. Won't be posting outside of NetGalley as I don't like to post below 4 star reviews.

DNF'd at 23%

I tried to keep going with this book -- really, I did. But the first few chapters didn't grab me like I expected them to. Wondering if it was me, I put the book down and tried to return to it a few weeks later, but I had the same disconnect.

Sorry!

Who are Those Girls? They are the ones we all remember from high school The popular girls, the ones who always seemed to be having (or going to) all the best parties. The ones every other girl either wanted to be or hated (maybe both!). In Those Girls by Lauren Saft, we meet Alex, Mollie, and Veronica. They ARE those girls. They are popular and best friends and most of the other girls in school wish that they were their best friends. But they also each have things going on that make them feel alone, things that they don't feel comfortable sharing with even their closest friends.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It's about a bunch of girls that are ultimately not very nice people. They are petty and entitled. I wanted to like them but I just couldn't. That being said, I quickly found myself eager to continue the story. Even though I didn't like the girls, I wanted to know how the story turned out. So if you want an interesting story and are okay with unsympathetic main characters, this might be the book for you.

Honestly I had to skim this after the first chapter. I found the author used sexuality as a shock factor instead of an actual plot and 'those girls' were so miserable to each other that I can't even believe they'd ever consider themselves best friends.

Already reviewed and feedback sent ages ago. Not sure why these are duplicating. But please find review content at my archived blog www.behindonbooks.wordpress.com

- Thanks! Sorry this is a little haphazard. Just trying to clear my Shelf here. :)

I had to do not finish this book at "slutcapades". Based on other reviews, I'm fine with this decision.

I have to say that I was not fond of the drugs, sex and all the booze in this story but I understand it goes along with the age of these girls and the atmosphere they are living in.

Veronica was the one that slept with pretty much every guy that she wanted to. She had no remorse in what she did at all. She even slept with her friends boyfriends. Seriously? I have no idea how she could think so little of her self.

Alex was sort of the quiet one of the three girls. She was the virgin of the group and it had to be hard on her listening to Veronica brag about all the boys she has been with. It was also like a slap in the face when her friend started dating the guy she had her eyes on.

Mollie was so scared of loosing her boyfriend that she was so blind to see that he was going to cheat on her. I did sort of feel sorry for her because he was such a jerk.

There is lots of switching up among couples, sex and craziness in this story. I would say give it a chance and make your own observation on this one. I could have done without the sex, drugs and drinking for sure.

I read only 10% of this before I stopped reading it. I read it as part of my arc catch up challenge. I read it as an arc. As always, this is my honest opinion.

I’ve never dnfed a book as fast as I dnfed this one. From the first 2% I was done, but I forced myself to get to my required 10% (albiet by skimming) and boy no.

I love the last line of this summary about what goes on in the mind of a teenaged girl…and I don’t know what teenage girl she’s talking about because I’ve never met anyone like these three girls.

Reading about terrible people can be okay at times. I read Courtney Summers’ Some Girls Are and while it will never be a favorite, I understood what it was trying to convey. These girls in this novel are just shallow and terrible and there was no redemption. I hated them from the get go and it was okay because they hated each other too.

It was just very flat and pointless, and shallow and everyone is a terrible person and everyone is talking about screwing everyone else, and really, there a lot of good books out there, and I don’t want to spend time reading bad ones.