Release Day Review - Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

How in the hell am I supposed to start another book after reading Dangerous Girls? How am I supposed to take anything that I've read at face value knowing that my heart has literally been pounding in my chest the entire time I've been reading and then the author goes for a SHOCKING ending that has left me breathless? How can I not go back and re-read Dangerous Girls yet again to find out if, along the way, I missed certain signs that Haas left for us to find like bread crumbs?

Dangerous Girls will literally mind screw you in so many different facets that you will end up becoming a babbling mess of emotions by the time you are finished. Haas has created a mystery novel that is ripped from the headlines of the most terrible trials in recent memory. If you followed the Amanda Knox trial (2009), toss in what happened to Natalee Holloway (2005) in Aruba and you get an idea of what Dangerous Girls is like. Then, throw it all out the window and start over again because nothing is as it seems or appears.

I will say this to future readers; go into Dangerous Girls with your mind wind open for all sorts of possibilities, angles, twists, turns, betrayal, outrage, and outright screaming at your book because Haas does such a wonderful job of luring you into her evil web only to be heard miles away laughing her ass off like Doctor Evil after finally besting Austin Powers.

Dangerous Girls is told from Anna's point of view with flashbacks. Haas alternates her story between the frantic call when Elise's body is discovered, to when Anna and Elise became nearly inseparable, to Anna's trial and the subsequent media frenzy which includes a Nancy Grace wannabe extorting the fact that Anna is seriously deranged, emotionally unstable, and most likely guilty of Elise's murder, to the twist that is Anna's relationship with Elise and her boyfriend Tate Dempsey, and finally, to Anna's time behind bars while waiting to be found guilty or innocent of killing Elise.

You will find yourself emotionally attached to Anna one way or the other. You will make choices and decisions based on not only what Anna is telling you, but what the tertiary characters are saying about her as well. Who will you believe? Anna, the over bearing prosecutor, or her so called friends? In the end, does it really matter who you believe, or will you correctly guess the final twist that Haas lays out for you brilliantly?

Author - Abigail Haas
Title - Dangerous Girls
Releases - July 16, 2013
Publisher - Simon Pulse
Genre - Murder, Mystery
Received from publisher through Edelweiss