Maddie's Books

All right, so the plot of Accomplice is pretty straight forward. Two girls want to get into impressive colleges, but don't think they've done enough to beat out the other applicants. So, why not fake a kidnapping? One of them will go missing, and eventually the other girl will find her friend. What college is going to turn down someone who's been through that? I thought the concept of this book was great, but... there was a lot more the author could have done with it.

My overall opinion of Accomplice is that it was just okay. The plot was really slow moving, and I felt that the book could have been summed up in about 150 pages instead of nearly 300. As far as the technical aspects of it go, I thought the author's style was a little odd. Sometimes, the way she explained things made you have to go back and look at it again to make sure you fully understood what was happening. Also, the whole read was kind of predictable. There were a few twists thrown in here and there, but nothing goes as terribly wrong as the inner jacket makes it sound. Jumping ahead a little, my last big complaint is that I really wasn't all that satisfied with the end. (Spoiler alert!) Finn and Chloe went through with their insane plan so they could actually get into a good college, but afterward, the whole kidnapping didn't seem to make a difference. Finn ended up just staying in town and going to a state university, and Chloe got into a nice college, but she was all ready pretty much guaranteed acceptance because her mother had went there prior. I was just kind of disappointed, because I felt like something bigger should have happened at the end, as a result of this huge plot.

But, there were a few good things about Accomplice, too. I really liked most of the characters in it, especially Finn. In a lot of books nowadays, the main character is very flat, and that makes the book a little worse. In Accomplice's case, though, I enjoyed going through the story with Finn and reading about it through her point of view. Another thing I enjoyed about Accomplice, was that there wasn't a whole lot of romance (but, I'm sure some people would see this as a bad thing, rather than good). It seems like in many books right now, there are always the same love triangles and the same cheesy romance. In Accomplice, there weren't a whole lot of relationship conflicts. There were a few things that popped up, but there certainly wasn't nearly as much as there could have been. My final praise to this book, is that it was actually pretty believable. There weren't a whole lot of times I was reading it and thinking, "This would have never happened."

So, if you're thinking of reading Accomplice, I would keep the pro's and cons in mind. If you don't mind a slow moving book, then you actually might like it. But, if you're on the fence, then I would suggest checking it out of the library or borrowing it from a friend, instead of actually paying for it.