Bad Girls with Perfect Faces

by Lynn Weingarten

Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls comes a stylish thriller about the darkness that lurks inside all of us.

When I looked up, his smile was wide and real. “Ready?” he said.
I faked a smile back. I had gotten so good at faking things.
I thought: You brought this on yourself, Sasha. You will have to pretend forever now.
He squeezed my hand again. He couldn’t begin to imagine what this actually was. He had no idea what I’d done. What any of us had.

When Sasha’s best friend Xavier gets back together with his cheating ex, Ivy, Sasha knows she needs to protect him. So she poses as a guy online to lure Ivy away.

But Sasha’s plan goes sickeningly wrong. And she soon learns to be careful of who you pretend to be because you might be surprised by who you become...

Told in multiple points of view, Bad Girls with Perfect Faces is sexy and twisted with shocks at every turn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481418607
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	10/31/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Lynn Weingarten is a writer and editor. She is the author of Wherever Nina Lies, The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers, The Book of Love, Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls, and Bad Girls with Perfect Faces. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Bad Girls with Perfect Faces

We were holding hands, palm against palm. I could feel his heart beating, his blood against my blood.

When I looked up, his smile was wide and real. “Ready?” he said.

I faked a smile back. I had gotten so good at faking things.

I thought: You brought this on yourself, Sasha. You will never get to stop pretending.

I thought: Protect those you love, no matter what the cost.

He squeezed my hand. This is exactly what I always wanted. And nothing I ever wanted at all. And there is just no taking anything back.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Road trip!” he said.

He couldn’t begin to imagine what this actually was. He had no idea what I’d done. What any of us had.

I turned the key. The engine started. We went.

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2017
Gr 9 Up—Sasha is sick of watching Ivy break Xavier's heart again and again, especially because her feelings for him have developed beyond friendship. So when Xavier and Ivy get back together, Sasha decides to take matters into her own hands. She knows that Ivy has cheated on Xavier in the past and she will cheat on him again. Sasha poses as a guy online and starts a flirtation with Ivy to prove to Xavier how bad she is for him. But things do not go as planned; they go horribly, horribly wrong. The story of Xavier, Sasha, and Ivy is told in multiple points of view. Sasha narrates her side of things in first person, while Xavier's chapters are told in third person. There is a third, mysterious first-person narrator, as well as text conversations between Ivy and Jake (Sasha's made-up persona). Together these threads weave a dark, twisted tale of betrayal and lies. Readers will be in high suspense as the juicy details of the drama escalate. Weingarten plays with the good girl/bad girl dichotomy in the female main characters, while Xavier is portrayed as helpless pawn between two desperate young women. The ending will have teens going back to reread everything that happened through new eyes. Hand this psychological thriller to fans of unreliable narrators and those looking for Gone Girl for teens. VERDICT An intoxicating page-turner, this one is sure to be popular.—Allison McLean, Elkhart Public Library, IN

School Library Journal

2017-07-17
A love triangle takes a turn for the dark. There never seems to be a good time for Sasha to tell her best friend, Xavier, that she is desperately in love with him—not while he's depressed after Ivy dumps him, not when Ivy decides she wants him back, not even when Sasha comes up with a beastly plan to entrap Ivy into revealing her selfish and cheating ways. Ivy is "a tornado, unpredictable and cracklingly alive." Sasha tells herself that she has Xavier's best intentions at heart when she uploads a picture of a hot guy with a "muscular bicep" and sends Ivy an Instagram follow request. Ivy takes the bait and starts a text flirtation, but she continues to lure Xavier deeper into a naughty relationship. "Come to my house," she tells him. "I promise we won't get caught." Sasha goes to extreme lengths to free Xavier from Ivy, and these pretty girls create some very ugly situations. Weingarten draws provocative characters with searingly sharp writing, but underneath the stylishness, the plot twists are abrupt and may leave readers with vertigo. The absence of specific racial or ethnic markers implies a white default. A teen love story that flits through a titillating social scene and wanders into a murky moral swamp. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews

"The multiple perspectives of Sasha, Xavier, and several secondary players give readers a chance to see how well-intentioned actions can be wildly off the mark both in their origin and their execution. The second portion takes the book into deep thriller territory with narration from the killer increasingly erratic and disturbing, especially since the book cunningly retains the possibility that it could be the voice of either Sasha or Xavier. It all comes crashing down in both a surprising and heartbreaking way, revealing how emotionally dependent these teens are on each other and pointing to the toxicity of those bonds. Fans of Weingarten’s previous Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls (BCCB 9/15) will happily find another twisted web to fall into here."

BCCB

"This stylish, edgy novel of mistaken identity told in three voices takes a dark, lurid turn, with the second part ricocheting into psychological suspense with devastating consequences. Readers will revel in the twists and turns as the characters attempt to gather the pieces of their shattered lives."

Booklist Online