Seventeen-year-old honors student Coretta White’s Tumblr, Little White Lies—her witty thoughts on pretty much . . . everything—has gone viral. She’s got hundreds of thousands of followers; she’s even been offered a TV deal. But Coretta has a secret. She hasn’t been writing all her own posts. Stressed from the demands of the sudden attention, she hired an expert ghostwriter, forty-one-year-old Karl Ristoff, to keep the Tumblr going. Now consumed with guilt, she confesses.
Almost instantly, she suffers a public humiliation. The TV deal disappears. Her boyfriend breaks up with her. Then Karl is thrust into the limelight, only to suffer a dramatic fall himself. Together, they vow to find out who is responsible for ruining both of their lives, and why. But in order to exact justice and a wicked revenge, they must first come clean with each other.
I agree with the other reviews of this book. Little White Lies has quite a lot to offer, but to really connect with it you need to really suspend your disbelief. Coming from a reviewer that loves fantasy and super-hyper contemporary books that might sound a little weird, but Little White Lies issues sit in the fact that it sells itself as a realistic book but it is anything but.
To start with, I was really excited by the concept, Coretta seemed like a really entertaining person and I did really enjoy reading her thoughts on the world. The issue started when Coretta's blog blows up after one or two posts, without her even really passing it onto anyone. That was my first problem, but I read on from there.
My other main problem came with Karl - he was different to how I expected and I couldn't help but see him as a sad, lonely old man and he became the villain to me - posting things that Coretta asked him not to, nudging himself in so this became the Karl show and stealing Coretta's thunder. I couldn't help but feel for the girl. I connected with Coretta, but not with Karl.
The whole book just seemed really crazy, like the authors gave up on making it realistic and instead tried to make it as dramatic as possible. It may work for other readers into that sort of thing, but for me Little White Lies fell quite flat.
Coretta was the saving grace of this book, and had the blog developed slower and Karl not been invited to write on the blog I could have really enjoyed reading about her. Unfortunately, it didn't work. This book tried to be much more than it was and that was a lot of the issue.
Book released 9th February 2016 by Soho Teen
Book received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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