Teenage drama…you know, when I was an actual teenager I wanted absolutley zero to do with it, but now that I’m an adult I LOVE indulging in a little guilty pleasure via book form!

And that’s great news because I recentley read two teenage-drama focused books. All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban and Clique Bait by Ann Valett. Both were different in plot, but they both revolve around a group of very real (no fantasy) teenage characters and some drama!

Here’s what I thought of them both!

Just before I start, if you’d rather watch my review of these two books, I shot a video during quarantine giving my thoughts. There are also cringey photos of me as a teenager during the video too – I dunno if that’s a bonus or a negative…that’s up to you!

But if you’d rather read my reviews – or watch and read then enjoy below!

All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
Rating: 3.75/5
This book was one of my most anticipated reads for 2020 – so I was super excited to have been given the opportunity to read the arc earlier on this year!

I was hoenstly expecting this to be a 5 star read for me, after all, the premise is amazing. But I have to admit it lands at just under a 4 star read for me.

All Your Twisted Secrets is an excellent story, and the type is one I usually enjoy. I love books and films about what choices humans make when under pressure and when a group is faced with a kill or be killed scenario. Which is what we have here!

I enjoyed the tension of the ‘in the room’ chapters of the book, but kinda lost a little bit of interest in some of the ‘in the past’ chapters. Actually, a fair bit of interest was lost – depending on the characters.

I have to admit that if I was in this room with these people, and knowing what I know about the characters, I’d have killed the ‘queen bee bitch’ character damn near immediatley. But I have violent tendancies.

I also don’t really understand why the characters in the ‘in the room’ scenarios wouldn’t bring up the ‘in the past’ knowledge. Obviously it’s for the reader’s benefit, but I kinda think that’s lazy writing.

But the main reason for the dropped star and a bit? The characters were 1-dimensional. Like, SUPER 1 dimensional. The baseball player only cared about baseball, the queen bee bitch only cared about being popular etc etc. It got old. Real quick.

Also, I personally hated the ending. Not only did it feel rushed, but I literally closed the book and shouted ‘LAME‘ at it when I read it. Urgh.

I also didn’t like a lot of the diagloue, it was like a bot watched a bunch of high school drama films and tried to write a book. It just didn’t seem real at times.

But overall this was a fun thriller that I tore through, and the good outweighs the bad by far! Although I’m still a little bit angry at the ending. Not gonna lie.

But ending on a positive, I have to say that the cover is AMAZING!

Clique Bait by Ann Valett
Rating: 4.5/5

YASS! This is the kind of trash that I love – and please know, I’m not using trash as an insult. At all. This is amazing to me, but let’s be real – it’s not exactly hard hitting stuff is it? But holy crap did I enjoy this guilty pleasure! To me, it’s just as good as Mean Girls (the film, duh).

When I was younger, this would have been my nightmare. I never watched Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars or any of those types of trashy shows that this book is being likened to. So I’ve got no reference to that. I wasn’t interested at the time –probably cos I went to an all-girl’s school and it was a little too real!

But now?! As an adult? Give me this high school drama between rich, sexy people!

I’m going to be honest: I DID NOT EXPECT TO LIKE THIS AS MUCH AS I DID!

I was along for the ride, 100%, all the way through! I loved the characters! I was given conflict, both drama and internal, I liked the plot, I related to a lot of the situations and the characters. There’s not a lot that didn’t hit a mark for me!

The only thing I’m bothered about is that I personally thought that Monica was a total bitch and didn’t deserve the revenge plan that Chloe wanted for her. But I guess that’s potentially the point – we have to make our own mind up. But I didn’t like how obsesses Chloe seemed to be.

The writing was pretty good for the most part, and the dialogue was fantastic! I actually believed the speech, which is quite rare. Yes, the world was a kind of world I’ve never been a part of, but I still beleive that this is how these characters would speak.

This was a nice little bit of escapism for me and I really enjoyed it.
Plus Will Bishop has officially made it onto my ‘book partners’ list!

The ending was a little bit…well…one of the characters kinda…jumped out of her own character a bit – so that kinda through me. But all in all it wasn’t a bad way to end it.

So that’s it! Those are two pretty good books that have come out recently that are all about the teenage drama! I’d recommend both, but I preferred Clique Bait by far!

***

Thank you so much for checking out my post! If you liked it let me know by tapping the like button! Feel free to leave a comment too! I reply to all my comments! ❤

You can also find & follow me in other places! | Bookstagram | Booktube | Twitter

If you’d like to support me there are several ways you can do that! A great way is by using my affiliate link for Book Depository to do you book shopping! They offer free worldwide delivery and it doesn’t cost you anything extra.

Again, thank you so much for stopping by! ❤