Anna's trial resembles a circus and it horrifies me at the way each little piece of a person's life can be taken out of context and manipulated to mean whatever the prosecutor chooses. Where it isn't about guilty/not guilty, but about the performance you put on and how convincingly you deliver the script. But I've always been fascinated by the portrayal of court trials as a kind of show or circus where everyone plays their parts. My knowledge of the law and judicial system is limited to one year at AS that I hated, so I'm far from an expert on what is realistic or not. But underneath there's something a bit different, a sadness or an anger or loneliness, that hides beneath the mask they've created. That reckless, volatile person who is always the life of the party, so confident, often overtly sexual and looking for a new adventure at every turn. Elise is such a wonderfully complex character. This is a dark story that takes you through the many nasty corners of teen girl friendships but it also shows the other side, the importance of friends to one another and the complicated psychology behind it all.

The story of the present is also broken up with flashbacks into how Anna and Elise became friends.

From there, we are taken on a journey through a murder trial that seems to paint Anna in a worse light with every piece of 'evidence' provided. Then, one day, Elise is discovered stabbed to death in her bed and Anna and Tate are the prime suspects. Anna, her best friend - Elise, her boyfriend - Tate, as well as others, all go to party hard, get laid and have fun. It's about a teen summer vacation gone wrong. oh yeah, and there's that whole murder thing too. I use 'YA' with some hesitation here because it's full of all the kinda stuff that will make some parents clutch their rosary beads - sex, alcohol abuse, drug use. So, what is this book? It's a mature YA mystery.

It is a satisfying story from start to finish that took me through so many different emotions. The ending is fantastic but it doesn't matter because the book is also about so many other things. Haas does what, in my opinion, all good mystery writers should do: she doesn't hang everything precariously-balanced on her reveals. Dangerous Girls is one of those multi-layered books that does several different things at once and still manages to do each one equally well. It's in danger of being given a quick once over and then dismissed as something vapid, senseless and probably crap. So, thank you.ĭangerous Girls is in danger. You managed to take me straight out of this whole Goodreads censorship/deleting reviews fiasco and plant me right inside another time and place many brave books have tried and failed this past week to do what you have done. 'Wouldn't we all look guilty, if someone searched hard enough?'

Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas