Book Review: Vanished by E.E. Cooper

---

Vanished
Author: E.E. Cooper
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Mystery
Released: May 12, 2015
Review Source: Katherine Tegen Books

Gone Girl meets Pretty Little Liars in this fast-paced psychological thriller full of delicious twists and turns.

Friendship. Obsession. Deception. Love.

Kalah knows better than to fall for Beth Taylor . . . but that doesn't stop her from falling hard and falling fast, heart first into a sea of complications.

Then Beth vanishes. She skips town on her eighteenth birthday, leaving behind a flurry of rumors and a string of broken hearts. Not even Beth's best friend, Britney, knows where she went. Beth didn't even tell Kalah good-bye.

One of the rumors links Beth to Britney's boyfriend, and Kalah doesn't want to believe the betrayal. But Brit clearly believes it--and before Kalah can sort out the truth, Britney is dead.

When Beth finally reaches out to Kalah in the wake of Brit's suicide, Kalah wants to trust what Beth tells her. But she's swiftly realizing that nothing here is as it seems. Kalah's caught in the middle of a deadly psychological game, and only she can untangle the deceptions and lies to reveal the unthinkable truth.

I normally don't do YA Thriller/Mystery but this one grabbed my attention with the "Gone Girl meets Pretty Little Liars" and "delicious turns" part of the blurb. I had high hopes for this one, but unfortunately it fell a little short for me.

I felt that the character's were a little forced. We have bisexual Indian girl as our main character and it's told from her POV. Let me say now that I have nothing against her race or that she's bisexual...it's the fact that it was sort of thrown in your face at the beginning that it seemed forced on you. It's like "I'm writing a book that has diverse characters and that makes me different!" If Kalah had come into the story with a more dominant attitude and didn't care what others thought of her, then maybe I would've liked her a little more. She was just so needy and had no self-confidence. It was kind of a turn-off for me.

I wasn't a fan of the other two characters, Beth and Brit. They also seemed forced and could've been any other teenager in any other book. I'm not sure what Kalah saw in Beth anyways. She wasn't that great of a person to begin with and then she kept giving her the cold shoulder. Lets