Pretty Crooked review

Pretty Crooked by Elisa Ludwig

Katherine Tegan Books

March 13, 2012

368pgs.

Willa’s secret plan seems all too simple: take from the rich kids at Valley Prep and give to the poor ones.

Yet Willa’s turn as Robin Hood at her ultra-exclusive high school is anything but. Bilking her “friends”—known to everyone as the Glitterati—without them suspecting a thing is far from easy. Learning how to pick pockets and break into lockers is as difficult as she’d thought it’d be. Delivering care packages to the scholarship girls, who are ostracized just for being from the “wrong” side of town, is way more fun than she’d expected.

The complication Willa didn’t expect, though, is Aidan Murphy, Valley Prep’s most notorious (and gorgeous) ace-degenerate. His mere existence is distracting Willa from what matters most to her: evening the social playing field between the haves and have-nots. There’s no time for crushes and flirting with boys, especially conceited and obnoxious trust-funders like Aidan.

But when the cops start investigating the string of thefts at Valley Prep and the Glitterati begin to seek revenge, could Aidan wind up being the person that Willa trusts most?

First of all, love, love the cover!!! Second, I’ve been a fan of the Robin Hood story since I was a child and watched the animated Disney version. So I was really excited about the story being set in high school. Pretty Crooked was a totally fast and fun read!

I loved the fact that Willa is a strong female character with a great sense of humor. Her voice really brings the story to life. She’s also led a different life than most MC’s. Her mom is artist, kinda flighty, they’ve moved around a lot, etc. It kinda reminded me of the mom in Mermaids with Cher and Winona Ryder. Then the mom sells some paintings for a lot of moola, and that’s when they move to Arizona.

Willa gets enrolled in Valley Prep, which has the usual suspects of spoiled rich kids and Mean Girls in Kellie, Nikki, and Cherise—although Cherise does have a heart and a conscious compared to the other two girls. She gets sucked into their Mean Girl world as well as draining some of her mom’s newly acquired money on fashion. She totally morphs into someone she isn’t, and fortuantely, she gets a wake-up call and realizes what's going on(plus her mom is superpissed about her spending!). That’s when she has the epiphany to stand up to the Mean Girls by becoming a modern day Robin Hood. She especially wants to help out the scholarship girls, Sierra and Mary, that Kellie and Nikki are making fun of because of their poverty through a malicious online blog.

As for the characters, I totally loved the LI Aidan! He was your typical rich, popular kid, but at the same time, he wanted to break out the mold. And for him, breaking out of the mold meant doing crazy stuff to get kicked out of school! I loved how his usual charms didn't work on Willa and that made him work even harder! He kinda reminded me of Logan from Veronica Mars! I also loved the character of Tre—the bad boy turning good who gives Willa some Robin Hood lessons! Her training sessions with him were great.

I did wish there had been more of the Robin Hood scenes and a little less of Willa getting settled into Valley Prep and life with the Mean Girls. It was really not until the second half of the book that we got to see the premise acted out in all of its fun mayhem! I'll be interested to see what happens in the second book since there's several lose ends left that I want to see tied up.

Overall, a really enjoyable read! 4 Stars!