Review: Pretty Crooked ( Pretty Crooked #1) by Elisa Ludwig

Pretty Crooked by Elisa Ludwig

• Pub. Date: March 13, 2012
• Publisher:HarperCollins 
• Pages: 368
• Series: Pretty Crooked #1

http://www.elisaludwig.com

"Willa's secret plan seems all too simple.


Take from the rich kids at valley prep and give to the poor ones.


Yet Willa's turn as Robin Hood at her new high school is anything but. Bilking her "friends"—known to everyone as the Glitterati—without them suspecting a thing is far from easy. Learning how to break into lockers and Beemers is as hard as she'd thought it would be. Delivering care packages to the scholarship girls, who are bullied just for being different, is more fun than she'd expected.


The complication Willa didn't expect, though, is Aidan Murphy, VP's most notorious ..."

First line: GO GO GO go go go!
The chant in my head, because I didn't have enough breath in my lungs to make sound.


Review:  I really wanted to love this book even like it but not the case for me. This is described as a modern day Robin Hood, personally after reading this novel to even say it's anything close to what Robin Hood did is an insult.

Willa was so misguided and shallow to think that she can solve the problems of the poor minority scholarship kids at her school by stealing from her wealthy popular friends and giving fancy clothes to the disadvantaged kids would make them accepted by the Glitterati. When in reality common sense will tell you that they would be the first people who would get the blame, especially when all of a sudden with all these thefts going on they come to school wearing three-four hundred dollar outfits. So instead of making things better she only made it worse for these kids who were getting bullied. Also it was pretty obvious these kids were not being picked on because of what they wore although that added to it.  

I would have thought Willa a more likable and stronger character if instead of secretly doing all this she had stood up to the Glitterati which she had become a part of and to actually become real friends with the "busteds" (the name the poor kids were given). But she didn't want to give up being popular.

Also there were way to many stereotypes, and I'm going to leave it at that.

  What did keep me reading was my curiosity about Willa's mom and her secret. She is definitely hiding something and I was hoping it would be revealed but instead it was used as a setup for the second book in the series. And unfortunately as much as I would like to know what is the deal with her mom it's not enough for me to pick up the next book.

There is a love interest but besides Willa and Aidan having a  romantic interest in each other we don't know much about Aidan at all. One thing that bugged me again was the secrecy, he got kicked out of Valley Prep and we have no clue why.

Overall this novel sounded very promising but fell short. In the end this was too superficial for my likes.

Buy on 

Amazon / B&N