Book Review: Mistrust by Margaret McHeyzer

Published July 29, 2016
333 Pages [Kindle edition]

Synopsis:
I’m the popular girl at school.
The one everyone wants to be friends with.
I have the best boyfriend in the world, who’s on the basketball team.
My parents adore me, and I absolutely love them. My sister and I have a great relationship too.
I’m a cheerleader, I have a high GPA and I’m liked even by the teachers.
It was a night which promised to be filled with love and fun until…something happened which changed everything.

My Thoughts:
I was gifted a copy via Netgalley.
Mistrust is a story about a 16 year old girl, Dakota, and the events that take place after her prom night where she is raped.

Overall, this book was too long and bogged down by insignificant details. It would give loads of information about nothing in particular that had no weight to the plotline at all, and then would jump ahead a few weeks in the next chapter. It definitely could have been edited down to maybe around 200 or 250 pages and I feel the impact of the story would have been better. There were also some minor grammatical errors throughout my galley copy.

I cannot really speak personally as to the topic of rape and the actions and feelings of Dakota being authentic, other than I don't feel that they were. Dakota's personality and feelings were very forced. I disliked that everyone around her kept asking "are you okay" over and over again, but then brushed it off like it was nothing. Especially the family. I think many of the situations in the story were very unrealistic. I also felt that the romance was very cheesy. Like too cheesy. I think it was unfair for the MC to be scared of being called a slut and being bullied (plus her sister being a feminist) and then turning around and doing the same thing to others. I think the family dynamics would have come across better if a lot of the details surrounding her parents' PDA was left out and a lot of the mealtime describing was left out.

Not taking into account all of that, I knew who the rapist was from the get-go and the plot was really predictable. I was very disappointed in it. I know my review sounds so nitpicky and negative and I wish it wasn't. I feel some editing and condensing would really work for this book and could have picked it up to a 3 star read.

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