Review: Twisted Fate by Norah Olson

Genre: YA Contemporary
Published: January 20, 2015 by Katherine Tegen Books
Length: 272 pages
Source: Katherine Tegen Books (ARC)

“When Alyson meets Graham Copeland, the new boy next door, she instantly feels like he’s a kindred spirit—shy and awkward like her, someone who has trouble making friends. It’s impossible to resist having a crush on him.

As usual, her sister, Sydney, sees things differently. In Sydney’s mind, Graham’s odd personality and secretive past scream psychopath, not sweetheart. Her gut is telling her to stay away from him, and to protect a love-struck Alyson from her own naïveté. But despite her instincts, Sydney is surprised to realize that a part of her is drawn to Graham, too.

And the more Sydney gets to know him, the more she realizes just how right—and wrong—she is about everything.”

Dang. What a crazy read! I finished reading this book about 10 minutes ago and I am still mind blown of what just happened. Twisted Fate has all kinds of twist you will not see coming. It is about two sisters, Sydney and Allyson, who are very different from each other, trying to reunite and become closer like they were back then. But there is this new boy in town, Graham, which pushes the sisters farther apart again because while Sydney knows there’s definitely something up with this guy, Allyson sees nothing wrong with him.

Sydney and Allyson are far similar from each other. Sydney a.k.a. Tate has freckles and dark hair, while Allyson is blonde and has flawless skin. Sydney is really smart and is even a possible Valedictorian candidate, while Allyson is gullible.  Allyson also enjoys baking and picking blueberries, while Sydney likes to ride her skateboard, often got called to the principle’s office for disobeying the school rules, and got high with her friends Becky and Declan. Out of the two, I really liked Sydney’s character because she was so kick-ass and smart. I didn’t really like Allyson that much because although she was sweet at times, she was so stupid and just made me want to reach into the book and punch her.

I also liked the side characters Becky and Declan because although they are just side characters, they had unique personalities. Becky is a computer geek who enjoys coding and hacking (this is so me except the hacking part lol), and Declan is really smart like Sydney who also might end up as class Valedictorian. The character who I despised so much was Graham. He was just so creepy, odd, and annoying and has a hard time differentiating right from wrong. Another characters who I did not like were the parents. So freakin’ annoying. They were always gone and unaware of their children’s situations and condition.

The writing style was okay. There were a lot of grammatical errors, but this is an ARC so hopefully they revise the errors. There were a couple point of views which I know some of you might not like because that tends to be confusing, but for me it wasn’t confusing. This book is told from Sydney’s, Allyson’s, Graham’s, Becky’s, Graham’s mom, the school principle’s, and a sheriff’s point of view. I know that’s a lot, but it was easy to differentiate who was talking (well, for me at least) because first off, it had their name at the beginning of the chapter, and the characters had their own personality. It mostly had Sydney’s p.o.v. though.

Now, the ending is what made me like this book even more. It had a huge twist which sent me chills and goosebumps. The first 60% of the book was a bit slow and didn’t really had a lot going on, but I think that’s what made the twist at the end a “woah” factor. I think the book had to be a little dry first so that the ending was “BAM! IN-YOUR-FACE” kind of ending. Don’t get me wrong, the first half of the book wasn’t boring; the mystery was definitely building up, but compared to the second half of the book, the first half was so-so. I wish there is a sequel to this book so that we can find out more about the main characters because the ending did not only left me surprised, but also hanging. Overall I definitely recommend it if you like books that are exciting, mysterious, and twisted.