The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu
“If you give people enough time, eventually they’ll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.”
The Truth About Alice is the story of Alice who’s accused of sleeping with 2 guys on the same night and then sexting one them, when he’s driving which leads to his death. Alice is branded a slut and a killer. The story is told from 4 different perspectives; Elaine the popular girl, Kelsie the ex best friend, Josh the best friend of the dead guy and Kurt the outsider in the small town.
Elaine O’Dea is Miss Popular in the small town. Everyone knows her and she loves it – she plans on living there her entire life because it’s what she’s used to. She, like most girls in the town accompany their mothers to weight watchers because weight is very important to the mothers. This is the first time we see her jealousy for Alice – Alice has a nice figure and a mother who doesn’t care about her weight.
“I try to use my power for good, not evil.” Being the popular girl whatever Elaine does people at her school copy so when she distances herself from Alice and starts up rumours naturally everybody follows in her footsteps. Contradicting her words. Elaine also harbours a deep dislike for Alice since 8th grade because Alice kissed Brandon (Elaine’s boyfriend) and this has carried onto the present making her hatred for Alice easier and the rumours easier to believe.
She has quite a lot of harsh stuff to say about Alice;
“It’s like she’s just this insult to girls” “Because Alice Franklin is a slut” “So we picked on Alice Franklin. A nobody, a slut, a killer”
But at the end of the book you realise that all her actions in her eyes are just minor – she believes what she has done is petty and that they are reversible. She’s the type of girl who will always believe that she has done the right thing.
Kelsie is the ex best friend. Kelsie moved to the town a few years ago and promised herself she wouldn’t be the loner nerd girl anymore so when everybody starts to isolate Alice she ditches her to remain popular. Their friendship not only fell apart because of that but because Kelsie doesn’t trust Alice – it happened over one summer when Alice lied about giving a blowjob and unintentionally put Kelsie down for being a virgin.
Kelsie has a bad experience over the summer and even though it’s not Alice’s fault she just can’t help but blame her. However even though Kelsie is a bad friend she isn’t a bad person – she has to go through a lot on her own and when she talks about ‘if she was ever a mother’ you realise that she isn’t all bad. She just cares too much about other people’s opinion.
Josh is the best friend of the dead guy and the person who started the sexting rumour. His chapters weren’t really interesting as they dealt with his feelings towards Brandon and how he contributed to the rumours. He did tell Brandon about Alice which in turn made Brandon pursue Alice. He does feel some guilt towards his actions but he’s not brave enough to ever tell the truth mainly due to the fact his true feelings might be revealed.
Elaine, Kelsie and Josh are flawed characters and not very likeable but they already know that.
The book deals with big issues mainly slut shaming. Josh says “They’d only talk bad about Alice. Don’t think that I thought crap was cool. I know it wasn’t” which shows how in this situation girls are the ones being targeted because girls having sex is more shameful than boys. Also it shows how if you have sex with more than one person than you’re labelled a slut. The book also deals with how people find it’s alright to spread rumours if they think the reason is just, how without trust relationships fall apart and how one small lie can lead to bad things.
However though the story had a good message it was really boring to read and not much happened. Also ending and entire Kurt thing felt a bit rushed into at the end.
★★★☆☆
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