Dangerous Boys by Abigail Haas

Dangerous Boys by Abigail Haas
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: August 14, 2014
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Source: Publisher
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It all comes down to this. Oliver, Ethan, and I. Three teens venture into an abandoned lake house one night. Hours later, only two emerge from the burning wreckage. Chloe drags one Reznick brother to safety, unconscious and bleeding. The other is left to burn, dead in the fire. But which brother survives? And is his death a tragic accident? Desperate self-defense? Or murder ...? Chloe is the only one with the answers. As the fire rages, and police and parents demand the truth, she struggles to piece the story together - a story of jealousy, twisted passion and the darkness that lurks behind even the most beautiful faces ...

I went into Dangerous Boys expecting Gillian Flynn, but it didn’t quite hit the mark. As someone who hasn’t read Dangerous Girls, it went against every fibre of my being to read this book first, as I normally prefer to read authors’ works in order of publication, if I plan on reading more than one book before starting. Therefore, I didn’t have much to go with when I started this book, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to get. But it certainly wasn’t Gillian Flynn.

Dangerous Boys was a good book, don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed it for the most part, but other parts just annoyed me and it was difficult to ignore them. Particularly the treatment of mental illness (and yes, I know that the character who treated a mentally ill person like crap wasn’t meant to be an A* personality, but that’s besides the point). It just made me sad, to be honest.

The mystery throughout the book was which brother had survived the fire, and I can’t say that I wasn’t curious, but I didn’t particularly care. I didn’t like Chloe’s relationship with either of the brothers, and I fucking hate boring love triangles, so if they had both died at the house that would have been fine by me. But since one of them was alive, I was intrigued to find out which one it was, and I had my hopes set on one of them surviving in particular.

Chloe wasn’t the most interesting main character. I felt awfully sorry for her because she had to put her life and hopes and dreams on hold to take care of her mother, and then terrible shit happens to her, and then Oliver comes in and starts emotionally manipulating her. Not cool. But personality-wise she wasn’t all that interesting to read about for the most part. And she’s not a Gillian Flynn-type female MC.

Sorry about the constant Gillian Flynn comparisons, but not really.

I was just expecting more of a mindfuck, and I’m hoping to get that from Dangerous Girls when I read it in the near future. I really hope it’s better than this book, because I’ve heard amazing things and it would be a shame if it turned out to be average.