Title: Ballad For A Mad Girl
Author: Vikki Wakefield
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Murder Mystery
Format: eBook
Rating: 2.5/5
Synopsis: Goodreads
Buy book: Amazon
Review: I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.
When I read the synopsis for this book I was drawn in straight away and wanted to see what the book had in store as it sounded really interesting, unfortunately I was left disappointed.
‘Ballad For A Mad Girl’ is about a girl called Grace who throughout her life has always been the joker in her group of friends, throwing pranks, taking risks and just being the friendship clown in general. One night when challenging a boy from the ‘enemy school’ if you like, something goes wrong with Grace and from then on nothing is right with her. She starts hearing voices and having hallucinations all whilst trying to act herself but something sinister is happening inside of her.
It took me a very long while to actually get into this book and honestly even when I did sit to focus on it I think I was just reading it to give me something to do. I found it really hard to like the characters and there wasn’t much emotion in the writing. A lot of the story was confusing and for me it was never clear if Grace was genuinely possessed or if she’s suffering from mental health problems. The relationships between characters weren’t great either. I felt there wasn’t a lot of character development throughout the book and with Grace’s friends, all of them were unsupportive and seemed to shut her off rather than offer to help her or listen to how she was feeling. The character that annoyed me most regarding this was Kenzie. As Grace’s bestfriend she should’ve been there to help Grace in any way she could rather than leave her to suffer and struggle alone.
In regards to the relationship between Grace, her father and her brother Cody, Grace was sort of excluded from everything they did. I get that they were all grieving the loss of their mother/wife but at a time like that then you need all the family support you can get and I didn’t like that a lot of the time it felt like both her dad and brother were ignoring me. There was also a part which included Grace’s grandmother (her mother’s mum) and with the whole story I’m not too sure what purpose it had to be included at all. It was brought up maybe once after that and even then there was no explanation that cleared it up or helped it make sense.
I’m honestly gutted that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’d hoped as I had such high hopes for it. I must admit that at the end it did pick up after Grace’s dad doesn’t come home and her and Cody go looking for him but then with the way it ended I was left disappointed again because you’re left wondering what happens which annoys me with books if there’s not going to be a sequel which is the situation with this book. Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a copy of the book for an honest review.
