Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James

After reading IN HER SKIN by Kim Savage, I was kind of craving another toxic best frenemies sort of book, and BEAUTIFUL MALICE was exactly it. It's got Mr. Ripley and Saltburn vibes, and it's told in a way that I've never seen in a YA book: parts of this story are narrated from the heroine, Katherine, as an adult who's a mother, and parts are narrated as her as a teenager, leading up to two inciting incidents that ended up changing her future and setting her on the path she is now.

Katherine's younger sister was murdered and she feels like she's to blame. The papers in her old town did too, which is why she lives in a new town with her aunt, going to school under a new name. When the school's resident "pretty popular girl," Alice, reaches out to befriend her, Katherine senses a trick. But Alice completely sucks her into her glowing orbit, and even though she's a small planet revolving around a blinding star, suddenly she feels alive again for the first time since her sister was murdered. But the closer she gets to Alice, the more she begins to realize that Alice can be cruel. Very, very cruel.

And there's not a lot she won't do once she's been crossed.

This is definitely a trainwreck of a book and part of what kept me turning pages was waiting to see what evil, sinister things Alice might do next. I'm not sure whether she's supposed to be a sociopath or a narcissist or both (probably both), but the portrayal of narcissistic rage and narcissistic gaslighting were brilliantly done, and I thought the author did a great job making this feel like a twisted psychodrama while still keeping it mostly PG-13. I actually wondered if this would be published today because there's quite a lot of "adult" content in this for a YA title and I feel like people might bitch about that now, but it deals with a lot of super relatable subjects that teens do deal with (sex, teen pregnancy, assault, alcohol use, toxic friends), so this feels more "cautionary tale" than encouragement. 

I would read more from this author in a heartbeat. She manages to capture the teen voice perfectly while navigating the grey lines of what it means to be a good person who sometimes does bad things.

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars