I really hated this book. It felt like some kind of weird power fantasy for Lockhart. Also Jule is such a horrible person. She keeps comparing herself to super heroes but she is not one. She gets a thrill off hurting people and is the worst person. I wish it had the We Were Liars ending.
I know I’m kind of late to this but I thought that the point of the story was that Jule is awful. We’re supposed to be rooting for her at the beginning and then our opinion of her becomes more warped the more we get to know her.
I just finished this book and I'm so confused. Imogen had parts in the book? What?? I thought the whole thing was from Jules's POV. The whole backward time thing was so confusing I had no idea what was happening most of the time tbh
I don't understand how Jule was able to memorise so many things in short spans of time like credit card numbers and passwords etc. Also, I didn't really understand her motivation for killing Imogen and taking over her life the way that she did. That part after she killed Brooke was so unrealistic. It didn't make sense how she was able to wash her hair with wet wipes but still have it look excellent afterwards? I managed to figure out quite early on that she killed Imogen so reading what happened didn't really seem shocking
bhavishka Julie is what I call an Unreliable Narrator. She often says things that really don’t make sense, but I think that highlights her lying nature. Also, from what I remember from the book, she killed Imogen because she just snapped.
Idk i found it clear which parts were really imogen but all i could think throughout the whole thing was how much can she look like imogen that noone even stops her at an airport? Also she beat the shit out that girl before throwing her off a hill like, obvious struggle could probably be seen on that body. You are so right about the cops being too stupid. I felt like little attention was paid to detail especially in comparison to We were liars
I enjoyed the book, however didn't feel like it was anything... special? Whilst it was original (or to me it was, at least), something about it just didn't wow me?
spoiler: i’m very late to reading this but i was so confused on like the whole point of jules actions. jules killing imogen & brooke seemed so random and her entire choice of just becoming imogen seemed random. i understand that jules wished she had a better life but i guess the main point is her just having some unresolved issues i suppose.
i have so many questions about this book. in the end it was said that jule has access to forrest' credit card. when and how did she attained it? all i could remember was she only got access to imogen's cards. and then when jule met patti for the first time in greenbriar, did patti mistook jule as someone imogen was close with? if it wasnt jule as she never went to greenbriar, then who exactly is imogen's close friend? and does it mean all the story started just because lita was sick, then jule went to greenbriar to cover her job, and then got mistook by patti as imogen's close friend, then patti asked her to search for imogen?
from my understanding , yes the story starts by lita being sick and jule going as her for the charity were she accidentally met immie's mom and immie's mom asked her to go to martha's vinyard to spy on immie because immie ran away .. then the killing happened and all that
i'm so late to reading this book but i just finished it and i'm so confused about everything that happened with paolo. and how did no one even notice jule wasn't imogen, after so many people were calling her different names? it was good overall and honestly the storytelling backwards didn't bother me but i did have to re-read parts over and over to understand.
it is somewhat confusing, but paolo’s dad went to jail because of fraud so i don’t think he really talked to him much. he went backpacking in different countries so that’s why he kind of disappeared. he appears in two different times/scenes, when jule first gets to martha’s vineyard it’s the first time she introduces herself as imogen and he treats her well so it perpetuates her desire to be imogen. so i think his purpose is to introduce the way people treat imogen just with regard to her name, and also to partially humanize jule. obviously jule is not the most likeable “protagonist”. the addition of paolo shows that jule is not a complete sociopath because she does develop feelings for him in some way. however his character did feel a little disposable. i think his character had the potential to do a lot more for the story in terms of either helping others piece things together, or in helping bring out some redeeming qualities in jule?
I think the book would have been better told in chronological order. The tension and dysfunction between Jule and Imogen would have been built up more. And it would have been less confusing.
I read this and I was so confused. Who is jule even and where did she learn all that stuff? Also I hated her but that it was interesting because I wasn't rooting for her, I just wanted to find out what happened.
Oh it’s a well-versed plot alright. It’s a complete scene-for-scene ripoff of The Talented Mr. Ripley. And e. lockhart thanked Patricia Highsmith in the book so it’s very deliberate. I wasn’t surprised at all about anything! because I’ve seen The Talented Mr. Ripley movie 😂 If you hadn’t read or seen TTMR, then yes, this book would seem interesting and unique. I was so mad while reading it. And the writing wasn’t good enough to overlook the blatant copying.
I was so disappointed by how much I didn't like this book, especially after how much I loved We Were Liars. The main character had no redeeming qualities and it was so hard to root for her. I kept waiting every chapter for there to be something revealed that would make her actions at least slightly more justified but by the last chapter I still hated her. I was also so confused throughout the whole thing, I guess the concept of going backwards is cool in concept but this book made it clear why most authors never do this. I was so lost that I didn't even know it was in multiple perspectives, I thought it was only from the point of view of the girl who killed her best friend? This book took me like 2 months to get through because I never had any desire to keep going.
This video came out a while ago but I recently read this book and I was SO confused! I didn’t get where Jule got all her training from (like how she was so good at fighting, like she said) and why she even killed Imogen in the first place!
That’s what I’m still confused about because she was lying about her parents being secret agents and she was poor living with her aunt so I’m wondering where she got trained
She is not trained, her parents are not spies and some woman/ aunt didn’t gave her spy training. At the last chapters, you can piece out that she went to martial art classes for free because she was working at the gym. Her mom died due to terminal illness and her father killed himself in the bathtub when she was 8/9, she got taken care of an aunt that didn’t even care about her. So she made this whole “origin story” to herself just to feel better. She never received any training whatsoever
4:55 Imagine wasn't dead at that time. They met before that. He did call her Imagine after the death in London when she was with Imagine's boyfriend and I think that idk maybe they thought she was still missing? Making a timeline of chapters was really helpful for me.
Came here to defend Genuine Fraud, but I haven’t read it in so long that I only remember loose bits. Also, can you use names for the questions parts? I think I can answer if you use names. I feel like your talking about Forrest.
I could definitely be wrong bc this is a very convoluted book, but I’m pretty sure Jule isn’t supposed to have any valid motivation for killing Brook and Imogen. I think she’s supposed to be completely deranged and almost disguise her brutality as some twisted form of feminism and physically abuse or kill people that hurt her emotionally.
Every scene!!! 😂 I was absolutely gobsmacked it got published. I guess because she thanked Patricia Highsmith in her author notes, the publishers were fine with it??
She killed immie because she realised she would never love her and would always go back to forrest and then killed brooke because she guessed what happened
