Tease by Amanda Maciel

Suicide is a popular topic for YA fiction. You know what else is a popular topic? A pretty girl's fall from grace. Tease tells the story of Sara Wharton, a typical high-school bitch who may have accidentally bullied a girl called Emma to death and now must deal with the consequences. Sadly, this sounds far more interesting in principle than its execution.

Okay, so really Tease is split into two stories-the present where Sara is dealing with the consequences and the flashbacks to the past when the bullying was actually occurring. I have to say, the chapters set in the past are far more interesting than the other half of the book. The present-day chapters deal primarily with Sara's lack of guilt (which I'll come to later), the potential lawsuit she faces and her falling for the outcast boy. None of these are particularly engaging or indeed, interesting. The popular girl falling for the outcast boy once she herself becomes an outcast is way overdone and frankly, Some Girls Are already did it much better. In this book it just sort of happens, with little resistance or development. The chapters set in the past however are the real story and I found myself skimming the present chapters to get back to the far more varied past.

My other main issue was with Sara's character. As I mentioned before, present day Sara has almost no remorse for what she's done. In fact, she doesn't even think she's responsible in any way. This doesn't really change by the end of the book and, while I can see the reasons behind the depiction, it does have the unfortunate side effect of not making her particularly likable. I hate to refer to Some Girls Are again but that book has a perfect example of how a character can be an unlikable person and yet still be sympathetic and ultimately good beneath it all. Sara...not so much. Her breakdown at the end doesn't feel genuine and it doesn't really excuse 200 odd pages of bitter denial.

Those two factors aside, Tease is an okay book. It isn't groundbreaking and doesn't really bring anything new to the table but it's told decently and the other characters are somewhat interesting. I can't help feel that there are many other books which have done this better though and if I'm honest, you should probably read one of them instead

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