Review: The List by Siobhan Vivian

from goodreads

An intense look at the rules of high school attraction -- and the price that's paid for them.

It happens every year. A list is posted, and one girl from each grade is chosen as the prettiest, and another is chosen as the ugliest. Nobody knows who makes the list. It almost doesn't matter. The damage is done the minute it goes up.

This is the story of eight girls, freshman to senior, "pretty" and "ugly." And it's also the story of how we see ourselves, and how other people see us, and the tangled connection of the two.

review

Every year, a List is posted all over Mount Washington High during Homecoming week. No one knows who the maker of the List is and how the responsibility is passed on every year but the List contains the names of the "Prettiest" and "Ugliest" girl of each grade. The List by Siobhan Vivian follows these eight girls over the course of the week. These girls may have nothing in common but whether they are the "Prettiest" or "Ugliest", it affects them and people around them in ways they would've never imagined.

The eight girls in the List couldn't be more different from each other; which made me wonder who the maker of the List is more than once. Yet, as different as they are, it changes them forever as being on the List caused them to suffer the consequences that come with being labeled. A superficial label like Pretty or Ugly is enough to change the way others perceive you and even how you perceive yourself. The fast pace and breezy writing style drew me in and I got equally attached to all of the eight girls, trying desperately to figure them out. The root of their turmoil and motives for some of their actions weren't exactly on the surface most of the time.

I'm usually not a fan of stories told in more than four perspectives, let alone eight. It has the potential to get confusing but the multiple perspectives were handled well and the issues dealt with were intense: involving an eating disorder, an overprotective mother, self fulfilling prophecies, heartbreak and emotional turmoil. Truths are revealed about the rules of attractiveness in high school. Even being declared Prettiest is not necessarily a perk.

Unfortunately, while I finished this book within twenty four hours... I was left wanting more. There was so much that was left unsaid and some of the details that were revealed were too ambiguous to be made sense of. Even if they could be interpreted, they didn't stop driving me mad. I like open endings and everything but it just didn't work for me in The List. For instance, the maker of that year's List was deliberated on and finally revealed but we were left wondering about the fate of the List in the later years...

And there was no final showdown! We were just left... hanging. Even fifteen more minutes with the characters would've been enough to fix that. I mean, sure, the crux of the plot was dealt with. But it still felt like a movie with the climax cut out. I had just got attached to the characters and it was like they faded into thin air without any explanation. Sadly, that alone made the book as light as air for me. While thought provoking and amazingly written with extremely memorable characters, The List left me waiting for some any kind of closure.

Publication date: 1st April, 2012
Publisher: Push
Source: Bought
Links: Amazon | The Book Depository | Goodreads

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars