Saturday, August 23, 2014

The Devil You Know (First Post!!!!!)


For my very first post, I am going to review the book I have most recently read (for about the 20th time, honestly). The Devil You Know by Louise Bagshawe (currently Louise Mensch). I would like to start off by saying that I have read all of her books multiple times, and will try desperately to not compare the ones I am reviewing currently to those that I have previously read, but I already know I am going to do as such, so be forewarned. I also hate indenting new paragraphs.
As with most of her works (see, already doing it) this story is centered around female lead characters. In this case, there are three of them. The main body of this story is how each girl pulls herself up by her bootstraps (so 90's) to work towards what they want in life. You are introduced to the girls after they are first born, but the story quickly fast forwards to each of them in high school.  Each of them, you will find, are a little disillusioned at what they want in life, and through the help of the mostly male characters that play their lovers or foes or friends, they eventually find what they all want in life. The slight twist in the book is that they are all identical triplets whose extremely wealthy Roman parents were murdered by their greedy cousin, and they were separated at birth. Each was sent to a completely different area; one in L.A., one in New York, and one in England. Even though it sounds like I am giving away a bunch of spoilers I'm not, unless you skip the first few chapters when you read a book. If that's the case go away (just kidding mostly). I don't want to give away too much about what they're doing, it is a fun part of the discovery. I also don't want to spoil it too much for you, but I will tell you that they do eventually find each other. I can also safely assume that you know this story will have a happy ending, which makes me happy, hence why I have probably read it so many times. 
There are many things about books that I find to annoy me, terrible dialogue and pointless filler, to name two. This book didn't have a lot of either. I can't think of a particular time where I would have changed what the characters were saying, because it wasn't something that sounds like it would freely flow from (say that five times fast) someone's mouth. The author also didn't go into a lot of unnecessary detail about surroundings that you ended up bored with what you were reading. She did a really good job of giving you what you need, so you can really picture what she's writing. The characters were also pretty easy to relate to. I loved hearing their stories, and how they became young adults, and what drove them to do what they did. There were just enough personal and professional blunders in the character's lives to make it a little bit funny, and a enough ridiculous references to the mob to make me wince in embarrassment for the characters. Overall, I would give this book a 4, maybe a 4.3. It has murder and mystery, girl power, love, regular power, southern accents, and hair metal. What's not to love?

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