Review- Pretty Bad Things

Title: Pretty Bad Things
Author: CJ Skuse
Publisher: The Chicken House (Scholastic)
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: ARC compliments of Scholastic

"Wonder Twins" on the run--and running amok--in Vegas.  Road Trip!

Paisley and Beau are boldface names again.  Last time, paparazzi called them the "Wonder Twins," two kids found alone but alive in the woods of exotic New Jersey.  Three days after their mom's death--and before their dad's criminal misdeeds.

Flash-forward to now: Their so-called lives?  Suck out loud: Hating on their cougarized, Botoxic grandma, they're totally clueless about the location of ex-con Daddy.  Till they discover a stack of old letters.  That's when they decide to jack the Pontiac and hit the road.  Holding up donut shops in Sin City might seem extreme, but if they can just get their pretty bad faces on the TV--or TMZ--they might wrap up their whole gaga saga with an Oprah-worthy reunion already!

My thoughts:

This book was crazy!! Imagine the worst part of you life pretty much starting after you're wondering around the woods for three days after you find your mother dead because she committed suicide.  Then going to live with your freak show of a grandma who only keeps you around because you're her meal ticket and she's stealing all your money.  Then she ships you off to boarding school because she can't handle you herself.  Well, this is pretty much Paisley's life expect she has a twin brother who grandma dotes on because he would never disobey her.  What a terrible life.  No wonder she just took off to find her dad even though she only had an inkling of where he was.

Even though the twins were robbing donut shops and candy stores, I found myself rooting for them and  hoping they wouldn't get caught.  I wanted just one good thing to happen for them.  The only reason they did all those bad things was so their face would be on the big jumbo tron and hopefully their homeless dad would see them and know they've come to find him.

Paisley is such a bad-ass!! During some of the scenes, I would get so nervous for her because I though for sure she was going to get herself in too deep or that she was going to get caught! Even though there is no way that I could ever justify what they were doing, I understand the reasons and intentions behind the actions, the actions that in the end were bad and illegal.

It was also a relief to finally read a stand alone novel and know that this book was most likely going to come to an end and everything that was started is going to be resolved by the time I get to the last page.  Even though it wasn't specifically stated how they lived the rest of their lives, it left it open for the reader to fill in the gaps and to make the ending for yourself!