When Peter Smith’s classmate snaps a picture of him during a late night run at the track, Peter thinks he might be in trouble. When she posts that photo–along with the caption, “See the Pretty Boy Run,”–Peter knows he’s in trouble. But when hostiles drop through the ceiling of his 6th period Chem Class, Peter’s pretty sure his trouble just became a national emergency.
Because he’s not really Peter Smith. He’s Jake Morrow, former foster-kid turned CIA operative. After a massive screw-up on his first mission, he’s on a pity assignment, a dozen hit lists and now, social media, apparently. As #Prettyboy, of all freaking things.
His cover’s blown, his school’s under siege, and if he screws up now, #Prettyboy will become #Deadboy faster than you can say, ‘fifteen minutes of fame.’ Trapped in a high school with rabid killers and rabid fans, he’ll need all his training and then some to save his job, his school and, oh yeah, his life.
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I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review
My Rating: 1.5 Stars DNF (65%)
I HATE not finishing a book. It takes a lot for me to DNF something. Generally, even if I strongly dislike a novel, I will skim read to the end. But I just couldn’t convince myself to finish #Prettyboy Must Die.
Normally, when I don’t finish a book, its because the writing was poor, or there were grammatical errors that just drove me insane. That wasn’t the case with this book. I actually liked the easy flow of the author’s writing style. I even enjoyed the pacing of it, there really was never a dull moment.
Unfortunately, that’s where the positives ended for me. The first thing that really bothered me was the cover. The main character, Peter, is described as a black teenager. So…why is there a white guy on the cover? Additionally, Peter came off as a HUGE misogynist to me. When trying to figure out who the hacker was, he eliminated a suspect because she was female, and the majority of hackers are men. Then, when another suspect presented themselves, he was once again focused on the fact that they were female. Why does that matter at all? I mean, he even mentioned her nails as a reason he was surprised. REALLY?
The other major issue that I had with the plot was that it was just ridiculous. The blurb for the book was interesting – I thought it was going to be a funny story about a young CIA operative, but the entire thing was taken too seriously. It was strange and unrealistic in every sense of the word.
My Takeaway: I really really wanted to like this book. I enjoyed Kimberly Reid’s overall writing style, but was not impressed with the main character and plot of the novel. The main character came across as extremely misogynistic to me.
As The Book Ends 