[Review] The Accidental Bad Girl - Maxine Kaplan

Summary: After getting caught hooking up with her best friend’s ex on the last day of junior year, Kendall starts senior year friendless and ostracized. She plans to keep her head down until she graduates. But after discovering her online identity has been hacked and she’s being framed for stealing from a dealer, Kendall is drawn into a tenuous partnership with the mastermind of a drug ring lurking in the shadows of her Brooklyn private school. If she wants to repair her tattered reputation and save her neck, she’ll have to decide who she really is—and own it. The longer she plays the role of “bad girl,” the more she becomes her new reputation. Friends and enemies, detectives and drug dealers—no one is who they appear to be. Least of all Kendall. (Pub Date: May 15, 2018)

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Not your regular contemporary YA.

3.5, because most of the plot was too surreal. But it deserved the round-up to 4.

Kendall isn't the queen bee but she's close enough when she gets herself involved in a big scandal along with her best friend's ex-boyfriend. Now everyone seems to either hate or avoid her. To make things worse, her Facebook account was hacked and attracted the attention of a dangerous drug dealer, who also happens to be really angry after having his "doses" stolen. Kendall is then blackmailed into finding out the culprit, probably the same person who hacked her into all the mess.

I was ready for some funny but romantic YA book and was pleasantly surprised by how seriously Maxine Kaplan took such a plot. Kendall really keeps getting in trouble and this damages her psyche, whom she believes to be, among so much else. Even though it's not really humor, the atmosphere is very light. You know it's serious but it's suffocating to read. You'll still have fun at how ridiculous Kendall's situation becomes.

The thing is, the author does own that it's a lot of bad luck for a girl who's always had it easy. But I don't think other parts were on purpose. I believe it was all too far-fetched, the stealing of the said "doses", the way some drug dealer would trust a highschooler to take care of that (among other things). Kaplan tries to explain what makes Kendall so unique but I didn't buy it. Because of that, at least the second third of the story I read rolling my eyes. This really made me miss a lot of the fun. It's just too much happening! After that part, though, it seems gets a hold again of everything and things get really serious.

I loved how many sides to the incident Kaplan explores, how she dialogues with all the issues present—although I felt she could have made a better counterargument to drug use. You start the story with one idea but it goes so much deeper. I liked that a lot.

Even though I never got it why so many people thought Kendall was that special, she was still a great heroine. It was actually easy to identify with her. She's fun, and she holds her head high, but she also makes mistakes and learns from them. I have no complaint there.

I recommend the book to those who are up to a YA with less romance and more action. It does have a little of the former but it's surely not the focus.

Rating: 4 out of 5.