Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party. When Healy High star quarterback, Brandon Fitzsimmons, dies in a car crash, it was because he was sexting with Alice. Ask anybody.
Rumor has it Alice Franklin is a slut. It's written all over the "slut stall" in the girls' bathroom: "Alice had sex in exchange for math test answers" and "Alice got an abortion last semester." After Brandon dies, the rumors start to spiral out of control. In this remarkable debut novel, four Healy High students tell all they "know" about Alice--and in doing so reveal their own secrets and motivations, painting a raw look at the realities of teen life. But in this novel from Jennifer Mathieu, exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there's only one person to ask: Alice herself.
- The Truth About Alice
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Powerful & Eye opening read!
By Spiced Latte
This book was powerful. With multiple and ever changing POVs, it allowed the story to take a multi-dimensional spin that made us look from different angles. Because of the great writing, it was easy to follow the story while the characters stayed in their perfect personalities.This story was about cliches. About high school and it's drama and how something small could turn around and blow out of proportion. The rumors could ruin someones life and The Truth About Alive really showed that.I could not say anything more that wouldn't be as good as the other reviewers said about this book but I did really really love it. It made me sad, made me happy, and made me angry. Alice was definitely very likable and not reading from her POV made the story just that much stronger.ARC was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.Review via Pretty Little Pages Blog
By Kristen @ Pretty Little Pages
Whenever I first started reading this, I totally thought, "teenagers aren't this bad" and rolled my eyes a few times. But then the realization smacked me in the face that teenagers are this bad and so are we. This book was such an eye opener. Sure, it held onto cliches and stereotypes, but it worked. The Truth About Alice was a brilliant and sad tale that left me with a smile as I finished it. I'm really into character driven stories. The way that the author tells this story is perfect for that. There are a handful of characters that you read from their point of view. It gives you all sorts of angles into the plot. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Because of that, you get to know all of the characters fairly well. The character I had the most love/hate relationship with was Kelsie. At first, I hated her. But then I just pitied her. Kurt was definitely my favorite, and his parts were my favorites. This book handles a lot of issues so well. It doesn't sugar coat things. It serves them up as honest as it gets. It made me have a lot of respect for the book and the author. In a world where we can't go a day without hearing about someone being bullied, The Truth About Alice serves as the perfect cautionary tale that still manages to give hope. It's such a quick read that you'll read it one sitting. You won't regret it, either. Fans of Young Adult contemporary fiction, welcome to your new obsession.**I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Jennifer Mathieu and NetGalley.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Good story, but message not strong enough
By Hannah @ Paperback Treasures
I was really excited for this book; slut-shaming is an issue I feel strongly about, so the story sounded right up my alley. And I did really enjoy it; if The Truth About Alice is supposed to be a portrayal of how horrible people are to each other, then it definitely succeeded. But even though I appreciated its message, I still didn't love the novel: to me, the characters are underdeveloped and the story doesn't really go anywhere. That's why The Truth About Alice was only an okay read for me.The characters are okay. Even though I'm not usually a fan of having so many different first-person narrators, I did like the concept of hearing Alice's story from different perspectives. I appreciated that Jennifer Mathieu actually managed to make the different characters' voices distinct. But I still don't think the characters are fully developed: there's Elaine, the most popular girl in school; Kelsie, Alice's ex-brest friend; Josh, the popular guy; and Kurt, the loser that befriends Alice when everyone else abandons her. They never really break out of these stereotypical molds, and we never get to find out anything about them as people. All of these characters' actions frustrated me throughout the novel, but I understand that them being horrible people is the point. Kurt, though, is supposed to be this great person for befriending Alice in her time of need, but I couldn't get myself to like him, either. If the only reason he starts talking to Alice is his romantic interest in her, this ruins any kind of genuine interest in helping her he might have, and it bothered me that this is never really addressed.The description makes it seem like we first get to read about Alice from everyone else's perspective and will then get to hear her story from her own point of view so we can find out the "truth" about Alice. We do have a final chapter from Alice's point of view, but I didn't really see the point: there's no revelation, we find out nothing we didn't already know. Asides from the relationship between Alice and Kurt, there is no development over the course of the novel, so the story didn't really seem to be going anywhere, for me.***This paragraph includes mild spoilers!***It also bothered me how much of the message relies on the fact that the rumors aren't true, that Alice didn't actually sleep with Brandon and Tommy and wasn't sexting Brandon the night he died. I understand that the novel is supposed to show how harmful it is to make up rumors about people and how rumors and bullying completely exaggerate what Alice has done. But this reduced the message to anti-bullying, rather than anti-slut-shaming, a message that I think would have been important for this novel. Because even if Alice had slept with two guys at that party, that's none of anybody's business. And even if she had been sexting Brandon, it would have still been his fault that he crashed because he was drunk-driving and checking his phone. The anti-bullying message is really well-done, but at the cost of sacrificing defending female sexuality in a way I'd been hoping this novel would.I know my review sounds very negative, but I really did enjoy The Truth About Alice, despite my problems with the characters and the message. The characters are too one-dimensional for me, and I wish the novel had a stronger anti-slut-shaming message, rather than just anti-bullying. But I did still enjoy the premise of the story, and if you're looking for a YA book that authentically portrays bullying, you should definitely give The Truth About Alice a try.
