Title: Dangerous Girls Author: Abigail Haas
Published: July 16, 2013
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller
Page Count: 388
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:It's Spring Break of senior year. Anna, her boyfriend Tate, her best friend Elise, and a few other close friends are off on a debaucherous trip to Aruba that promises to be the time of their lives. But when Elise is found brutally murdered, Anna finds herself trapped in a country not her own, fighting against vile and contemptuous accusations.
As Anna sets out to find her friend's killer, she discovers hard truths about her friendships, the slippery nature of truth, and the ache of young love.
As she awaits the judge's decree, it becomes clear that everyone around her thinks she is not just guilty, but dangerous. When the truth comes out, it is more shocking than one could ever imagine...
There is something about my mind that refuses to be shocked by supposedly brilliant plot twists. Dangerous Girls has all the makings of a twisty, startling mystery novel. Abigail Haas is an excellent writer, and the nonlinear narrative kept suspense to a maximum. But the problem was, by the middle of the book I’d figured out all possible directions the plot could go, and at the end I was about as surprised as I would have been if I’d woken up to see that, why yes, the sky is still blue after thousands of years of also being blue.
At the same time, I think to say that Dangerous Girls is a bad book would be a disservice. It’s not. Haas’s prose and characterization are good, and the mystery itself is complex, with plenty of red herrings and the like. This was most certainly an enjoyable read, and I liked watching Anna’s trial come together, especially since the book moves back and forth on the timeline, rather than going chronologically through spring break, the murder, then the trial.
Anna herself is an interesting character. She’s sort of a pretender in an upper-class society, her father only recently have made it big—and his wealth is nothing compared to her friends’ parents’. The reader sees Anna as a lonely new kid before she eventually meets up with Elise and they become best friends, almost creepy in how close they are. Anna gets a boyfriend at some point, and then the three of them, plus some other friends, go to Aruba over spring break. And then Anna winds up on trial for murdering her best friend. No big deal.
To be honest, I never really have found stories “shocking”—be they mystery or thriller or what have you. It’s the way my mind works, I guess. Within a few pages of Dangerous Girls, I figured out exactly what conclusion would be the most unexpected, decided that’s where Haas was going to take things; therefore, that conclusion became by default the most expected. I would have bet real life money on my theory. And I was right. Very right. And I was disappointed, because I’d hoped that Dangerous Girls would find a way to thwart me, but it went in the most obvious unexpected direction, leaving me almost feeling like I could have skipped reading the book at all, since I’d known how it would end since the beginning.
I don’t know. Dangerous Girls obviously has fans, and readers have been completely shocked by Abigail Haas’ twist. I wasn’t, though. Good as this book may be, a truly successful mystery probably shouldn’t be that easy to pin down. Dangerous Girls is well-written and engaging, but lacks oomph where it counts most.
