Deadly Cool
By: Gemma Halliday
ARC Provided by HarperTeen
b&n // amazon
Published Date: October 11, 2011
Publisher: HarperTeen
Book Format: Paperback; pp 320
Age Demographic: Young Adult
Hartley Grace Featherstone is having a very bad day.
First she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her with the president of the Herbert Hoover High School Chastity Club. Then he's pegged as the #1 suspect in a murder. And if that weren't enough, now he's depending on Hartley to clear his name.
Seriously? Not cool.
But as much as Hartley wouldn't mind seeing him squirm, she knows he's innocent, and she's the only one who can help him. Along with her best friend, Sam, and the school's resident Bad Boy, Chase, Hartley starts investigating on her own. But as the dead bodies begin to pile up, the mystery deepens, the suspects multiply, and Hartley begins to fear that she may be the killer's next victim.
*Summary taken from Goodreads.
❝THERE ARE THREE THINGS YOU NEVER WANT TO FIND in your boyfriend's locker: a sweaty jock strap, a D minus on a last week's history test, and an empy condom wrapper.
Lucky me, I'd hit the trifecta.❞
Deadly Cool is an action packed, fun, witty, relatable, mystery that is slightly reminicent of Meg Cabot's writing style. It's been compared to the likes of Veronica Mars meets Pretty Little Liars. I adore both of those shows, so I was excited to get the opportunity to read this and it did not disappoint.
It was funny and smart in all the right ways, as it introduced character's that I enjoyed, amped up the mystery by proving me wrong every time I thought I had it figured out, and a hot mysterious bad boy that I nor the main protagonist (Hartley) could resist. I have a tendency to enjoy mysteries in general, so it was no surprise at all that I liked Deadly Cool as much as I did. It didn't take me long to read this book, I pratically devoured it within like a day and a half, because I just did not want to put it down once I started reading.
The ending was surprising, because I just didn't see it coming and I actually liked that. A good portion of the time, I find myself being able to figure out the mystery and solve it before I finish a book, but with Deadly Cool that wasn't the case at all. I liked how well Halliday did a fantastic job making the suspsects look like the suspects that they were supposed to represent, but still possessing enough innocence that you almost doubted whether or not they were culpable the better part of the time, while reading.
Halliday does a marvelous job at providing the right amount of supsense and intrigue, needed to fuel the mystery that Hartley has decided to solve, along with her best friend and the mysterious bad boy who turns out, is not so much "bad boy" after all once you get to know him. Hartley is a very likable and relatable character in so many ways. She is fun, witty, and super sweet even if she is hurt by the fact that her ex-boyfriend is pretty much a scum sucking sack of waste, who cheated on her with the president of the Chasity Club. She possesses a certain amount of strength and compassion, which is a driving force at getting to the truth of the mystery, even if she is somewhat hurt by that truth.
The secondary character's were just as essential to the plot of the novel, because they were there to serve a purpose as the suspects they were meant to be and Halliday successfully utilized them to the best of her ability, in a well thoughout plot driven novel. Personally, I think everyone should have a bff like Sam. She was super amazing, funny, a little over-the-top dramatic, and totally supportive of Hartley. You can't go wrong with a menagerie of character's as colorful as these.
One other thing the novel does, is point out the social status as far as high school and young adults go. For instance, the popular people consist of Color Gaurd Girls, Cheerleaders, the Footballer's along with the rest of the sports teams, and those who come from families that have money. Then there's the social outcasts, which is the category that Hartley, Sam, and so many other's seem to fall into. I liked that Halliday established early on, that Hartley chose not to be a part of the Color Gaurd or the Cheerleaders, setting hereslf apart from them on her own terms.
Deadly Cool, was a deadly cool fun read that I enjoyed quite a bit and I am looking forward to the sequel that follows, Social Suicide. I know, without a doubt, that it will definitely live up to it's title in a hip new way that will draw reader's in and keep them captivated until the end, the same way Deadly Cool will.
{ This ARC was received from HarperTeen, in exchange for an honest review which I have provided. No money exchanged hands, I review books for fun because I love to read. I am not interested in monetary gain. Any piece of this ARC that was quoted, is not part of the finished product and should not be perceived as such.}
