Bad Girls Don't Die By: Katie Alender

Title: Bad Girls Don't Die
Author: Katie Alender
HARDBACK
Amount of Pages: 346
Publisher: Disney Hyperion Books
Release Date: April 21, 2009
Geared Towards: Teens

"I go closer, and walk around her to see her eyes. They are wide open. A trickle of blood drips from the side of her gaping lips.

She is dead.

Next to her is the precious doll, whose hair is still clutched in Sarah's hand.

I step closer-

And suddenly the doll's eyes pop open, bright green and glowing."

Summary (From Front Flap): Alexis thought she led a typically dysfunctional high school existence; dysfunctional like her parents' marriage, her doll-crazy, thirteen-year-old, Kasey; and even her own antisocial, anti-cheerleader attitude.

When a family argument results in tearful sisterly bonding, Alexis realizes that her life is creeping from dysfunctional to dangerous. Kasey is acting stranger than ever: her blue eyes go green; she uses odd, old-fashioned language-and she even loses track of chunks of time, claiming to know nothing about her weird behavior. Their old house is changing too. Doors open and close by themselves, water boils on the unlit stove, and an unplugged air conditioner turns the house cold enough for the girls to see their breath.

Alexis wants to believe it's all in her head, until these seemingly harmless occurrences become life-threatening-to her, to her family, and to her budding relationship with the student concil vice president. Alexis knows she's the only person who can stop Kasey; but what if that green-eyed girl isn't even Kasey anymore?

Wdebo's Review: Wonderful, wonderful debut novel by Katie Alender. It seems to have this learned, experienced nature that many debut novels don't posses. Katie's writing flows well and grabs your attention from the get go. Bad Girls Don't Die is a fantastic novel that scared the hell out of me, mainly because of the whole mention of dolls. Seriously, if it was about a haunted cat it probably wouldn't have scared me as much as a story about a haunted doll.

The only thing that I didn't like about the book, was how, in the close to ending, everything just swirled around really fast and was hard to get a grip upon, it seemed that everything before was written very slow mo then suddenly we get to that part and everything is speed up. I think she should have taken some more time to describe what was happening to match the tempo of the rest of the story. Also, some parts just seemed like a badly acted out children's theatere, how a lot of things just seemed to be conveniently there to help.

But I loved the ending, it was seriously adorable...and just a totally diffrent mood then the rest of the story...which in other books would annoy and piss me off, but in her's it just seemed to work.

Carter is seriously so wonderfully adorable. I love him!! He is so sweet and cute...except a bit slow, if I do say so myself.

Cafe Cover Chat: The cover is very haunting and scary like the book, except would a possesed person really take that much time to paint their toes dark red? (B)

All in all, a wonderful debut novel that is a sure need to be read! And a total page turner...for those who like a little mystery, scary story, this is the book for you!

Grade: A-

Wdebo :)