Sunday, June 20, 2010

Beautiful Malice-Rebecca James

Beautiful Malice
Rebecca James
Bantam, Jul 13 2010, $25.00
ISBN: 9780553808056

During lunch at a Sydney high school, popular Alice Parrie invites a stunned bookworm Katherine to attend her eighteenth birthday bash. Alice explains it was the way Katherine ripped the skin off Dan Johnson for being nasty and little when a nervous woman gave a talk about the future.

Four years plus since the party that changed her life and her surname, Katherine prays no one learns just who single mom Katherine Boydell raising Sarah was once. The tragedy of Alice is too mindful of the tragedies of Katherine’s murdered sister Rachel and Sarah’s father Mick; as the flamboyant teen drew out the dark secrets of her reticent new BFF. Thus then pregnant Katherine Boydell nee Patterson failed to attend Alice’s funeral; she believes Aunt Philippa is at her side encouraging her to move passed the lingering grief she feels.

This is an odd exciting psychological thriller starting with the opening stunning hook “I didn’t go to Alice’s funeral. I was pregnant at the time, crazy and wild with grief”. From that moment readers will want to know who Katherine is and what did happen to all those in her sphere who died. Rotating between the present and four years ago, readers who appreciate a character driven thriller with limited action will want to know what happened to Katherine four years ago.

Harriet Klausner

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