Review ~ Flawed ~ Cecelia Ahern

Title: Flawed

Author: Cecelia Ahern

Published: March 24th 2016

By: Harper Collins

First line: I am a girl of definitions, of logic, of black and white.

Last line: I run.

Synopsis: Celestine North lives a perfect life. She's a model daughter and sister, she's well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she's dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan.

But then Celestine encounters a situation where she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule. And now faces life-changing repercussions.

She could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found FLAWED.

In her breathtaking young adult debut, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts a society where obedience is paramount and rebellion is punished. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her-everything.

It normally takes me a while to get into a new series.  I have new characters to learn and try to form an opinion on, a new world I have to learn to navigate and typically I'll normally be scouring the pages to figure out which characters I need to dislike the most.   Not so with this book. From the first page I was totally addicted.  Ahern's writing style is so easy and fluid and the characters and storyline are so addictive I actually lost the best part of a day reading Flawed and didn't realise that I had until I realised that I was starving!

The world that Ahern has created is of course a fictional one,  but it retains elements that are familiar and that in itself I think makes for a more realistic backdrop. School, home life, policing and politics are not that far away from what is the norm now so everything is easy to picture when reading. It becomes easier to say what if even when the storyline becomes more dark.  There are several plot points in the book that make you realise how even after war history is still doomed to repeat itself, even when measures are put in place to stop that happening.  I also love the dynamics within Celestine's family which seems so strong at times but then under certain circumstances, particularly at the beginning it can become so fragile it's easy to imagine the family imploding under the pressure.  Family members are not always as perfect as their outward image suggests. Same goes for the Celestine's relationship with Art and with her sister and threefold for Art's relationship with his father.

There are characters to dislike in here, Judge Crevan being your main object of hatred who is brutal and flawed way beyond those around him.  And there is an inequality between those that are flawed and those that are 'perfect' that made my blood boil!  This is particularly the case when Celestine herself displays traits that would be seen as desirable in most societies but are deemed as flaws within this new world. Her treatment after the fact is deplorable but it keeps you reading because you're waiting for her to get justice.

I don't want to give away more detail than I have already.  Best just to say I loved this book and I more than eagerly await the release of the next instalment, Perfect, which comes out at the end of March 2017.  Seems like too long a wait for me!

4/5 - I was hooked after the first couple of pages.   More now please!!