Full review on: Flipping Through the Pages

[b:The Accidental Bad Girl|35960814|The Accidental Bad Girl|Maxine Kaplan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1511988476s/35960814.jpg|55656738] by [a:Maxine Kaplan|16549755|Maxine Kaplan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506099822p2/16549755.jpg] was a surprise read. I never expected to like it so much and also wasn’t aware that this book deals with some important issues like slut-shaming and drug intake. I thought it to be some high-school based teenage drama but this book was more than that.

This story is about Kendall Evans. Her start of the senior year in high school is already rocky because of an incident that took place in the Junior year. She was caught in the school half-naked with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Grant. Now everyone has made the distance from her even her best friend Audrey. Then she comes to know that her Facebook profile has been hacked and in the process of finding the hacker, she finds herself in the middle of some shady drug dealers. Mason, the drug dealer starts blackmailing her to find out his missing drugs or he will make sure that Kendall doesn’t attend the Space program which was her dream. She made friends with Simone and Gilly in this whole mess up and with their help, she tries to get out of this situation and to recover her image of "bad girl".

• I really liked Kendall’s character. She is a badass female character, the one who refuses to be labeled by the gossip surrounding her. She somehow reminded me of Serena from Gossip Girl 😀 Kendall is not always an easy and likable girl. She is mean and at times she even doesn’t realize that. Even though she intentionally doesn’t try to be mean, she if often the part of it because she doesn’t try to stop her friends from being mean to others.


• I really loved that [a:Maxine Kaplan|16549755|Maxine Kaplan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506099822p2/16549755.jpg] never tried to prove the character of Kendall as a good one. She was as flawed as her so-called friends. Initially, I was not sure that whether she would be able to get out of her circle and would redeem herself. But in the end we get to see that how despite making bad choices one after another, she wasn’t an unlikeable character.


• I loved Simone. Meeting and befriending her was like a turning point for Kendall. She started seeing the things from a different angle and rocked her image of the bad girl, with the newly found new girl, fantastically.


• This book centers around drug dealing and Kendall’s involvement in it. It shows the real issue that our teenagers are facing these days. This drug issue is a real threat this book highlights how a teenager gets involved in this circle.


• Apart from drug use, there is also a lot of thoughtful discussion on rape and rape culture, during the second half of the book. Surely, I never thought the story to contain this, but it definitely works as an advantage to the story.


• The best thing that you can take from this book is the thing that as much as girls/women feel independent, there is always this stigma of jealousy and making others feel low. In this male-dominated world, girls cursing others, fighting over boys and even slut-shaming, is the thing that needs to be avoided.


• The slut-shaming issue is also an important issue which many girls have faced. While the boys get a free pass, it’s always the girl who has to suffer from the consequences.


• This book also focusses on the misuse of social media and tries to make aware the readers to ensure the safety of their accounts.


• The mystery thrown in the story is quite good. I kept it guessing till the end that who the real culprit was. I was really shocked to know the person behind hacking Kendall’s profile.


• Mason was a perfect villain this story needed. He was charming, witty and manipulative and knew his ways to make anyone believe him.


• With so many strong characters, character development is definitely the strongest point of this book. We see so many changes in almost all the characters journey and I loved seeing how they evolved throughout the story.


• The story was super fast and well written, so it doesn’t give you time to get bored.

• The biggest problem that I have with this book is that there was so much going on. This story was too plot-heavy. I love a story with a good plot, but here sometimes I felt that there were so many things going on and that too in a fast pace and I was unable to grab all the details.


• Also, we can see that because of this fast-paced thing, the ending got little disruptive. Though all the things bound up nicely, I wish it was little slower for the better understanding. there was too much info to gather.


• The romance was clearly not done in the best way. But I think that because the focus of the story was different, it is okay.

Overall, The Accidental Bad Girl was a great read and it exceeded my expectations. It is a story about one girl’s journey into finding herself and accepting who she is without thinking much of what others say, and it is well-executed. With so many issues talked about, [a:Maxine Kaplan|16549755|Maxine Kaplan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506099822p2/16549755.jpg] has done a wonderful job and we can see that her writing is fierce and unapologetic. I definitely recommend this book.

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