Flawed by Cecilia Ahern

One choice could cost her everything

Having read quite a lot of Cecelia Ahern's older fiction I saw Flawed and was immediately intrigued. From the cover, the blurb and the premise you can see this is quite a change of direction for Ahern not to mention the fact it is also young adult.

Conveniently my mum brought herself a copy and I stole borrowed it as soon as she'd finished it as it has been on my list for such a long time.

Well the fact I was a little bleary eyed in the morning is testament to the fact I stayed up until crazy o'clock in the morning just to get it finished. I loved it. The story is based in society where one mistake gets you branded as flawed. This brand is put in a specific place to represent how you are flawed and what your failing is. Those branded as flawed are viewed as lesser humans, they have a set of rules to follow restricting everything from their diet to their lifestyle. They are ostracised by society and live as a second class citizen. Celestine North is perfect though. She and her family are not flawed. They see those who are flawed and are repulsed by them. Only Celestine's sister Juniper seems to speak up. But Celestine is logical, her world is black and white and suddenly she sees something illogical in the system and she must act and this changes the course of her life irrecoverably.

I thoroughly enjoyed Flawed. I loved the characters and their struggles. Celestine was passionate, sometimes a little hot-headed but her heart is in the right place. All her family irritated me at the start apart from Juniper but then as the story developed you could see their love for their daughter and how scared they were of the Guild who impose the Flawed rulings. I appreciated that it was not a heavy young adult romance, if anything although important Celestine's relationship with Art is very mature in how Ahern writes it. I personally really dislike Art so I hope he will be out of the picture in the second book. Ahern wove an incredibly emotive story, several scenes in the book had me literally sobbing - my heart was in my mouth.

I can see this being very popular for fans of dystopian fiction. I think it helped that I have had a break from the genre for a bit as it had all got a bit blurred. Fans of the Matched series and The Killables will enjoy.

Fans of dystopian will love. Superbly written!