Undone by Cat Clarke - Review

So, Cat Clarke has become one of my favourite authors. I discovered her a couple of years ago, when I read her debut novel Entangled. I read the whole book - 372 pages - in one sitting, because I just couldn't put it down. As soon as her second novel, Torn, came out, I read it straight away (and reviewed it here). It wasn't as good as Entangled, but still really good.

And then came Undone. Better than Torn, maybe even on a level with Entangled, I loved this book. My mum read it before I did, and she kept telling me to read it quickly so she could discuss it with me, because she needed to talk about it! Needless to say, I devoured it.

Jem Halliday is in love with her gay best friend. Not exactly ideal, but she's learning to live with it. 

Then the unspeakable happens. Kai is outed online ... and he kills himself.

Jem knows nothing she can say or do will bring him back. But she wants to know who was responsible. And she wants to take them down. 

A searing story of love, revenge and betrayal from a bestselling author.

From Goodreads

My Review:

Positive Aspects:

- Cat Clarke is excellent at characterisation. She makes it so easy to get into a characters head, and empathise with them. Each of her main characters has had a different personality. I loved Jem, the main character in Undone, as she is believable and I found it easy to empathise with her. I also loved Kai's character, and you learn a lot about him even though he's dead throughout the majority of the book. The characters in the popular crowd were excellent - Cat Clarke enabled me to see both their popular sides, and their human sides. 

- She's also excellent at providing hooks for the reader - as soon as I read the first page, I was hooked, and wanted to carry on reading until the very end. 

- She tackles real problems that a lot of teenagers face, in a believable way. In this novel, she tackles bullying, homosexuality, and the typical things teenagers do - drinking, parties, sex. 

- The novel does a great job of showing how easily people are led. Jem becomes someone she hates just so she can get revenge, and soon starts to behave just like the people she hates. She starts doing things she never would have done before. The novel shows how easily people can be influenced, and change into someone unrecognisable. 

- This novel also implies that appearances can be deceiving. Before the events in the novel take place, Jem spent most of her life watching the popular crowd, and therefore thinking she knew everything about them. However, during the course of the book she learns that they're very different from her preconceived notions. 

Negative Aspects:

- Some parts of the novel were quite predictable. I figured out pretty early on what had happened, and who was involved in what happened to Kai, so the big reveal at the end wasn't really a reveal, at least for me. That said, this didn't detract from the reading or the plot, and there was still another reveal waiting that I really did not expect. 

Overall:

I absolutely loved this book, and reading about Jem and her sabotage of the popular kids. The ending was super sad, but I'm a sucker for a sad ending, or anything that makes me cry, so this just made the book even better. In fact, I think I was crying reading the first chapter, so I expected the sad ending! I give this book 5 stars, and hope she hurries releasing another one!