A Teen Protagonist Novel Flawless By Sara Shepard

The novel I am reading is “Flawless” by Sara Shepard. This is a teen protagonist novel that takes place in a high school with 4 friends who are the protagonists they are all friends and working together to find the killer of who used to be their fifth friend Alison. They all have many issues they have to deal with throughout the story with boys, drugs, parties, and their insecurities about themselves. Also just about their school lives and how they get through their difficulties and finding the mysterious killer “A”. Many of the characters are friends, they have a lot of problems like normal high school problems that many teens have.

A character in the story who is also one of the four protagonists is Emily. She appears as a jock girl. She was a jock girl because she played sports like soccer and she was also a swimmer. She is known for her shyness. She was shy because she didn’t talk to many people, and she was a member of a conservative family, The Fields that were very loyal. She is loyal and a sweet girl but she is questioning her sexuality. She dated a guy and just then she started to question if she really liked guys or girls. She has hazel eyes and strawberry blonde hair. She has many achievements in swimming. She was a friend of Alison who went missing mysteriously and she secretly liked her friend Alison. Later in the book, she discovers she is bisexual. She does attempt to kill herself from her struggles with her sexuality and depression.

A second character who is another protagonist is Hanna. She was body-shamed and bullied when she was fat now she is skinny and pretty. She has an obsession with looking flawless. The mystery guy revealed to Hanna that her boyfriend Sean who broke up with her is secretly dating and she is broken internally. She is annoyed that Sean is seeing someone else. Hanna also gives out pills to her friends. She sneaks out of the house to go to parties she is broken from the boy, and skinny and pretty now after she has been through a lot with her eating habits and people body-shaming her.

The theme in this novel is friendship because they are helping a friend even though she is dead. The girls are trying to figure out who her killer is. Another theme is determination. The four friends aren’t giving up until they reach their goal of knowing Ali’s killer also known as ‘A’. The theme I will write about is friendship. Their friend Ali has died and she has a mysterious killer named “A”. So all her friends are determined to find that killer. It is also friendship because they are sticking with her and will find the killer of their friend that they cared about. They have to be honest to solve the mystery and trust each other to find the killer which trust and honesty are a part of friendship. Ali short for Alison was killed by “A” she was popular but yet mean and cruel. They were always there for Alison even though she was a little cruel and mean to have as a friend. They are now four friends that are very close, Aria, Hanna, Emily, and Spencer. Originally there were five friends, but then Ali went missing while they were having a sleepover in the summer. It shows friendship by them always being for each other, never leaving each other’s side, having sleepovers, and not giving up on finding the killer ‘A” for their friend Alison.

Teens can relate to this by if they have had problems with drugs to do better in school, teens have problems with being insecure about their bodies and their looks, teens could also have problems with boys, and socially have issues too. So this story relates to reality because all these things can be in a teen’s life in real life. A lot of teens go through this stuff in school. It could also deal with someone blackmailing you like “A” does to the girls in the book, and some teens also go through cyberbullying which is like blackmailing.

The event I thought was the most interesting in the story is how Hanna is obsessed with how she looks and she has a very deep secret that could potentially ruin them and her so ”A” is threatening to tell people. Her situation with the boy is that she finds out from mysterious “A” that Sean, her ex is seeing other people. Sean’s dad crashed his car so Hanna is sentenced to help out at Sean’s father’s burn clinic for crashing his car previously from where she swipes some Percocet pills. She finds out that her friend Aria and Sean were going to a party together so she sneaks out to go. So her situation with this boy is very upsetting and complicated. My proof is that in the story she keeps running into Sean with others girls at parties or in school all the time and she gets upset over it because she might still love him. And she has to help his dad which makes it even worse.

I would put this book a grade B. I would recommend this book to teens who like drama/romantic books. I thought this book was a grade B because it really emphasizes problems that teens could go through in reality and how they deal with them. Also, depression and suicide talks about that and how you could go through a depression stage in your high school life. It could also be bad because they do, do some bad things like drinking, or sneaking out of the house to go to parties without telling your parents. I didn’t give it an A because in the middle of the book it can get a little confusing, but it tells you what high school is like and that is what I thought of this book.