Review: TORN by Cat Clarke

Torn by Cat Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

They didn't mean to kill her...now the guilt will tear them apart

Alice King isn't expecting the holiday of her dreams when she sets off on a trip to the wilderness with her mates. But when her best friend Cass decides to teach mean girl Tara a lesson, Alice finds herself in a nightmare she can't escape.

Now Alice is the guardian of a secret too horrific to tell; and a secret too terrible to keep. A secret that will change all of their lives for ever...

— 

Torn is the second book by Cat Clarke that I’ve read, and this is a good read. I absolutely loved her other book, Girlhood, and I think that’s the problem—if I hadn’t read that book and been blown away by it, I probably would’ve enjoyed Torn a lot more than I did. But for me, Girlhood was excellent, and though Torn is a great story, it felt a little flat compared to it.

Don’t get me wrong. This IS a good book. I just went into it with really high expectations.

Torn tells the story of Alice, a sixteen-year-old who’s caught up in the murder of classmate and former best friend, Tara. The plot is high tension and the ending particularly was well done.

I especially enjoyed how Clarke explores Alice’s unravelling mental state and the ghostly apparitions of Tara.

The characterisation, on the whole, was well done in my opinion and all main characters felt real and believable. They felt like the typical girls you’d meet in a secondary school, and reading the chapters sent during school really felt like we were stepping into a high school.

Tara was probably my favourite character. I really liked how we saw her evolution and how Clarke allowed to see who and what had shaped Tara into what she’d become—and how those same factors played into her death.

The romance between Alice and Jack, Tara’s brother, felt a little forced, particularly at the beginning. By the end, I was fully onboard with it—though there seemed to be a few pacing issues where we’re told rather than shown how time is passing and how the relationship progresses.

The ending of this book felt raw but satisfying.

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