Flawed by Cecilia Ahern

Kindle Edition, 334 pages
Published March 24th 2016 by HarperCollinsChildren'sBooks
My thanks to Net Galley and Harper Collins for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

Blurb

"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 in which 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 this stunning novel, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts a society in which perfection is paramount and mistakes are punished. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her everything."

My Review

This is the Young Adult debut by bestselling author Cecilia Ahern and I thought it was a great leap into the world of dystopian fiction.

I found the concept of the book to be really intriguing in that anyone who does not behave perfectly is deemed to be flawed and is branded for the rest of their lives and treated as second class citizens. I did find it strange that there was a different system for criminals in that they would not be branded and once released from prison could continue their lives as normal, whereas a flawed person - whose crime was maybe bring dishonest or making a mistake at work - would be restricted in every way, from what they could eat to having a curfew and not being allowed to be helped by a "normal" citizen.

Celestine has grown up with this system and is determined to be perfect and to fly under the radar without questioning anything until an incident close to home makes her begin to question everything that she assumed was right before. I really felt for her when she made a split decision which could lead to her being branded as flawed. Her thoughts are sometimes quite selfish, but I imagine that living in a society like that you would need to protect yourself in that way.

This book was fast-paced and I enjoyed the questions that the book raised about morality and courage. I can't wait to read the next book in the series! I would give this book 5 out of 5.

About the Author

Cecelia Ahern wrote her first novel, PS. I Love You when she was twenty-one. It was published in 2004, the number 1 bestseller in Ireland for 19 weeks and sold in over forty countries. The book was adapted as a motion picture directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler and released in 2007 in the United States.

Her second book, Where Rainbows End (US title: Love, Rosie or Rosie Dunne) won the German CORINE Award in 2005. She contributed with short stories to charity books and is also the co-creator and producer of the ABC comedy Samantha Who?.