Undone

by Cat Clarke

[Angie]

Undone was pretty intense. Jem and Kai have been best friends forever. Other than his family, Jem is the only person who knows Kai is gay. At least until someone mass e-mails a video of Kai with a mystery guy to the whole school. A few days later, Kai jumped off a bridge. Now, Jem is understandably devastated, and she doesn't want to live in world without Kai. But then his sister delivers a reason to keep her going for at least another year.

It did take me a bit to get into Undone, mostly because Jem was hard to warm up to. I didn't quite believe that she was in love with Kai, especially knowing that he was gay. But I do believe in the power of their friendship. Jem is also extremely judgmental of the popular crowd. She's basically invisible, and no one knows who she is until after Kai's death, but even then she's just know as that dead gay kid's best friend. Certainly not much better. But her judgements are part of the journey. Kai left her a series of letters, and he tells her to be more open to people, which she does.

The main plot of Undone is Jem exacting revenge on those who did this to her best friend. Her plan is to get in with those popular kids, ruin them, then take her own life. That is a very dark plot, and not something I have come across before. I really enjoyed it though. I loved seeing Jem change as she gets deeper into the plan. Things do not go the way she expects at all after spending a year with these kids who she'd never even considered talking to before. The only thing that kept me from totally loving it though, was that I figured out who sent out the video and who the mystery guy was right away.

Undone was great. I've never encountered anything like this before. Those last several chapters are fantastic! Knowing who really did it didn't stop me from being shocked at everything else that was going on. Then that ending? Geez. I honestly didn't expect it to turn out that way.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.