Ros met Jono online just a couple of weeks ago. Now Jono's beautiful ex-girlfriend Freya has disappeared without a trace...and disturbing evidence is coming to light. So Ros agrees to help him search for her - but she is hiding a secret of her own. This is only the beginning. This story is about to get pretty twisted.
I've had my eye on this book for a while, and was really pleased when Panmacmillan sent it to me in the post. The story is about a girl - Ros - who meets a guy - Jono online. Their friendship develops, until Jono's ex-girlfriend, Freya, goes missing. So Ros decides to help Jono in finding her. The problem? There have been a lot of abductions around the time Freya went missing, and the police suspect that Jono has something to do with her disappearance.
The story is told from both Ros and Jono's point of view, which I thought really fit this story well - because you know Jono is innocent, and it really builds up the tension because you're constantly wondering if he'll be wrongly put in prison...and then there is also that niggling feeling of, what if he did do something, but the catch to his story was that he lied. But, it wasn't like that - which I think was bad in the sense that that could have been a really good twist to the story (hence Pretty Twisted?) but I'm glad it didn't happen because I wanted to like Jono - and I did.
I really loved the characterization of Ros and Jono. Nowadays, I tend to not like reading books where the main character is younger than me, because I can't get properly wrapped up in the story - but I found that I didn't feel like this with Ros, and could relate to her in a lot of ways - both when I was fourteen, and now. I'm pretty sure that a lot of you have guessed that I have made interwebby friends myself, and I know the feeling when people say "Oh, you met a boy? He's a pedo, don't meet up with him, he'll hurt you," And I know things like that could happen, but guess what? Me and my family went and met them, and I am still great friends with them to date. I'm not suggesting that is the best way to make friends, but I understand how irritating it can be when everyone makes assumptions. Another thing that I think the majority of the teenage population can relate to is how a lot of people believe it is not possible to be 'just friends' with the opposite sex - there is always something sexual involved. But it isn't that way, and that link throughout the whole book made it quite believable and realistic.
Another thing oddly realistic was the connection they had to the murderer. When you see news like that, you think, Oh what are the chances that that will happen to me? But then again, what were the chances of it happening to that girl? I think the novel brought across the fact that stuff like this does happen to people out there, and that is is real. I think the fact that obviously Ros or Jono would know the murderer was quite Murder-Mystery-Cliche - but I liked it because it shows what a small world it is, and that you don't know what happens behind closed doors.
Wow. I just read back that last paragraph, and I sound so depressing. But to wrap it up, I really enjoyed this book. It doesn't have your typical Girl-Gets-The-Guy ending, which I really liked, because too many books nowadays are based around happy endings, when the likelihood of it happening in real life is minuscule. I think Blaxill is a really good author, and I found this novel quite an easy read, so I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who perhaps isn't a major booknerd but likes a good story when they do read. If that description applies to you, go and get this book now! You won't regret it.
Rating: 3/5
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