The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove
Lauren Kate
235 pages
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Kroger impulse buy
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This was a seriously twisted story.  Natalie Hargrove is the most popular girl at her school and is practically a shoe-in for Palmetto Princess (aka prom queen).  As she and her longtime boyfriend Mike prepare to become high school royalty, something goes terribly, terribly wrong and Natalie flounders to fix it.

Natalie is a deplorable character; she's selfish to the core, but that's what drew me into the story.  When something goes wrong of Natalie, she doesn't fess up and move on, she tries to fix an wrong with another wrong.  It's like a train wreck you can't tear your eyes from.  Lauren Kate indicated at the end of the novel that what happens to Natalie is fate, but I like to think of it more as karma.  I really can't give more away than that.

One other thing that drew me in was that book took place in the South and the community that Natalie lives in has a right and wrong side of the tracks.  I also enjoyed reading about these high-schoolers' and their social lives - the high school I went to certainly wasn't like that.  (Or, if it was, I obviously was never invited to those parties!)

This book gets four stars.  It was a twisted, delicious read for my Sunday afternoon, but I would have liked to have seen Natalie's relationship with her parents fleshed out more.