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Review: Flawed

by Cecelia Ahern

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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Publish Date: 24th of March 2016

Title: Flawed
Author: Cecelia Ahern
Publisher: Harper Collins Children’s Books
Book: #1 of Flawed
Genre: YA, Dystopian, Sci-Fi
Found: Netgalley
Rating: 4 Voodoos

You will be punished…

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 perfection is paramount and flaws lead to punishment. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her everything.

- Goodreads

Popsugar Challenge #29. A dystopian novel

Cecelia Ahern has a wonderful way of writing. It’s fluid and captivating and makes her books so bloody hard to put down! I actually found myself snapping at people when they tried to talk to me whilst I was reading this, and also had a few cheeky moments at work where I was reading it under the desk!

Flawed is so completely different to Cecelia Ahern’s other books. Firstly, it’s aimed at Young Adults, something that her easy-read style lends itself nicely to, and secondly its a science-fiction, dystopian! I do love a genre hop! (When it works that is, which thankfully this did, for me anyway.)

Celestine lives in a society that believes everything should be done for the greater good, and anything that is deemed to upset and effect the greater good is punishable by the Guild. (The Guild are a branch off of the government but not controlled by the government). There are five ways you can disturb the peace, 1. by making a bad decision that harms others, 2. by stealing from Society, 3. by Aiding other Flaweds 4. by being disloyal to the Guild and finally 5. by lying and deceiving others. All of these things are punished with the searing of an F into the skin. Each F has a designated area 1. (bad decisions) the Right Temple 2. (stealing) The Right Hand Palm, 3. (aiding) The sole of your Right Foot, 4. (disloyal) your chest, and 5. (lying) your tongue. This society is based on preventing mistakes by removing all second-chances, the idea being to scare people into not taking risks. The punished are known as ‘The Flawed’ and are treated badly with a restricted lifestyle. It is a warning to all. Don’t mess up!

To start with I found the idea of this society kind of bizarre. I couldn’t get my head round how you would ever get to this stage but then I began to think about how society has acted in the past, with racial and sexual discrimination and realised, while this seemed totally absurd to me at the start, it could actually happen if we let fear get in the way of common sense… and that’s when I really got caught up in the story of Flawed.

Celestine is your average school girl. She’s very bland, very ordinary. She does as she’s told and is an A* student. She is a problem solver, she doesn’t understand her emotionally driven sister because she, herself, is very logical. So when she starts to think about the discrimination toward the Flawed, Celestine’s logical brain starts to see flaws. But that can’t be right, society is perfect, THEY are perfect… aren’t they?

I didn’t really like Celestine at first. I found her very… well… bland. There wasn’t anything special about her, but I think that was the point. She was so ordinary, so ‘the perfect’ Guild girl, that when society broke in her eyes, it broke for everyone else too. You could feel the struggle as everyone tried to hold on to what they used to believe but now weren’t quite sure of… The injustice of everything was so in your face that I just wanted to scream at the book most of the time! I haven’t felt that kind of connection to a book in a while, and I found it so refreshing.

I loved the fact that this first installment of Flawed concentrated on Celestine and how she had to learn to make her own decisions, learn to decide what was right and wrong for her, not for everyone else, and most of all that she didn’t have a boy to hang on to for the whole book! It was great! A heroine who could save herself! There was sort of a love triangle but really I would say it felt more like a love line… Celestine had a boyfriend called Art, but she seemed to realise quite quickly that he wasn’t the boy she thought he was and only after that did she start to fancy someone else.

Overall, a great start to a new dystopian series. I look forward to seeing where this goes next!

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3 comments on “Review: Flawed

  1. Katherine Fleet

    I generally don’t read dystopians anymore, but this review has me thinking that I should definitely check this one out:)

    1. Ms4Tune

      Hi Katherine, I haven’t for a while either. The genre had become so predictable with all the books seeming to follow the same plot, but Flawed is probably one of the better ones I’ve read, as the world building was brilliant and the romance not over done. It’s no Hunger Games though and if I’m honest it reminded me a bit of Lauren Oliver’s Delirium. I’d love to hear what you think of it so please come back and let me know if you do read it!

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