After getting caught hooking up with her best friend’s ex on the last day of junior year, Kendall starts senior year friendless and ostracized. She plans to keep her head down until she graduates. But after discovering her online identity has been hacked and she’s being framed for stealing from a dealer, Kendall is drawn into a tenuous partnership with the mastermind of a drug ring lurking in the … in the shadows of her Brooklyn private school. If she wants to repair her tattered reputation and save her neck, she’ll have to decide who she really is–and own it. The longer she plays the role of “bad girl,” the more she becomes her new reputation. Friends and enemies, detectives and drug dealers–no one is who they appear to be. Least of all Kendall.
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The start of Kendall Evans Senior year in high school is already getting off to a rocky start. She is shunned by the girls she used to consider friends because of an incident that took place at the end of her junior year when she was caught in school half naked with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Grant. Now she finds herself out of the “in” crowd and kind of at a loss as to where she belongs. It doesn’t help matters that her facebook account gets hacked and she finds herself in the middle of some pretty shady drug dealers. Kendall is being blackmailed and her only option is to help Mason, a local drug dealer run his drugs and find the culprit behind drugs that have gone missing or Mason will make sure that Kendall does not get into the space program she so desperately craves.
Is there a way for Kendall to get out of this mess, piece together her shredded reputation, and find herself along the way?
Kendall is not always an easy girl to like. She is a mean girl and even though she doesn’t try to intentionally be mean, she puts no stop to her friends being mean to others. Is that really worth it to be in the “in” crowd in high school? High school can be rough and even worse if you are a girl. Girls can be mean and judgemental. I guess in a way Kendall just wanted to be accepted by her peers. Was Kendall wrong for sleeping with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend? Yes! Could I understand why her friends abandoned her? Yes, but then her “friends” slut shamed Kendall and bullied her. Karma just came back and took a chunk out of her in my opinion.
I really wasn’t sure if Kendall could actually ever redeem herself or if she was meant to be an unlikeable character. She just kept making bad choice after bad choice. It was hard to see her making decisions and acting grown when she was still seventeen years old. There is a turning point though and you can see she has a conscience especially with Simone, a girl she befriended at school. Once that turning point hit, it really shined a new light on Kendall for me and she became a good girl and a bad girl at the same time and quite frankly, she kinda rocked!
I really loved The Accidental Bad Girl, but at times it also made me very angry. The author really brings home the point that as much as girls/women feel liberated, they always hold that stigma of being considered loose or amoral. Slut shaming is real and many girls have faced this consequence when guys get off scott free. Girls are classified as a slut and for boys its “boys will be boys.” Do I think this stigma will ever change? Probably not. It is such a double standard and why it is acceptable to boys and not girls is something that I will never really understand.
There is a lot going on in this story, but I never felt like anything overshadowed Kendall as she came into her own. This is very much a growing up story as well as a mystery thrown in that was very well played. I was at a loss as to who hacked her Facebook and started Kendall down this road and when it was finally revealed I was shocked. Maxine Kaplan surely does have some tricks up her sleeve and she knows how to keep her readers guessing. Also, the ending is so spot on and I couldn’t help but be proud of Kendall for seeing herself for what and who she is.
The Accidental Bad Girl is a clever account of one girl’s journey into finding herself and coming into her own and accepting who she is. Maxine Kaplan writes with heart and takes issues such as slut shaming and brings it to the forefront. She does not sugar coat her words regardless if they are harsh and demeaning. Kaplan weaves interlocking stories that come together so effortlessly and so refreshingly honest that you will have a hard time putting this book down. I sure did. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of this highly immersive YA story.
Maxine Kaplan’s debut YA thriller is a fast-paced mystery, equal parts darkness and humor, with a whole lot of attitude. After seventeen-year-old Kendall’s Facebook profile is hacked, framing her for a crime she didn’t commit, she is swiftly drawn into a world of trouble with local NYC dealer Mason. Kendall finds herself blackmailed into making his deliveries until she can uncover the person who really stole Mason’s stash, and along the way, she dives deep into an examination of who she is: a good girl or a bad girl, a girl with a bright future ahead, or a girl who will risk that future to take down the true darkness at the root of Mason’s business. THE ACCIDENTAL BAD GIRL will be a hit with readers drawn to NYC narratives, twisty plots, and complex female characters.