The Truth About Alice
by Jennifer Mathieu
Combined with the eerie, intriguing cover, the tagline of The Truth About Alice is fantastic: “The rumors about Alice Franklin are getting out of hand. . . And no one is doing anything about it.” When the chapters start in alternate POVs of a handful of Alice’s high school classmates telling their versions of what happened, it seems obvious that Alice won’t be given a chapter of her own, and for a very good reason. Throughout almost the entire book, author Jennifer Mathieu leads her readers down what would have been a clear, obvious, necessary path. Out of nowhere, the ending twists and makes it a completely different type of book. This is supposed to be a cautionary tale, a horrifying accounting of how teenage bullying can get out of hand and lead to terrible consequences, but it doesn’t follow through. The only explanation I can come up with is that Mathieu did write a cautionary tale but that the publishing house forced her to change her book. The last twenty percent does not coincide with the first eighty percent.
I absolutely loved the first half of this book. The teenaged drama, the soap opera scandal, the rumor mill getting out of control leading to what was supposed to be devastating—everything I love in a teen book. I couldn’t stand the ending. It was unrealistic, trite, and completely changes the message of the rest of the novel. If this was supposed to be a warning to teenagers to find facts before spreading gossip, it didn’t really do its job.
I absolutely loved the first half of this book. The teenaged drama, the soap opera scandal, the rumor mill getting out of control leading to what was supposed to be devastating—everything I love in a teen book. I couldn’t stand the ending. It was unrealistic, trite, and completely changes the message of the rest of the novel. If this was supposed to be a warning to teenagers to find facts before spreading gossip, it didn’t really do its job.