Undone

A couple of years ago I read Thirteen Reasons Why and to this day it is still my favorite book. When I read the description of this book I knew I wanted to read it because of the similarity. I immediately got really into this book and I couldn't put it down. There was always the constant suspense of what Jem was going to do. Of course throughout the book I always wanted the opposite of what she said she was going to do. Anyway, this book makes you fall in love with every single character no matter how small their role is. Read this book and you will fall in love with the characters and the plot and everything.

Really enjoyed this book. Wish more of her work was on kindle

This book was absolutely amazing from start to finish. It has drama, romance, suspense and everything else you'd imagine a great book to be. I finished this book over the course of two days. The ending will have your jaw hanging that's for sure.

Loved the book could not put it down. I would highly recommend this book. Can't wait to read more books from this author.

Great book with a lot of really raw emotions. I could not put it down!

Undone was pretty intense. Jem and Kai have been best friends forever. Other than his family, Jem is the only person who knows Kai is gay. At least until someone mass e-mails a video of Kai with a mystery guy to the whole school. A few days later, Kai jumped off a bridge. Now, Jem is understandably devastated, and she doesn't want to live in world without Kai. But then his sister delivers a reason to keep her going for at least another year.It did take me a bit to get into Undone, mostly because Jem was hard to warm up to. I didn't quite believe that she was in love with Kai, especially knowing that he was gay. But I do believe in the power of their friendship. Jem is also extremely judgmental of the popular crowd. She's basically invisible, and no one knows who she is until after Kai's death, but even then she's just know as that dead gay kid's best friend. Certainly not much better. But her judgements are part of the journey. Kai left her a series of letters, and he tells her to be more open to people, which she does.The main plot of Undone is Jem exacting revenge on those who did this to her best friend. Her plan is to get in with those popular kids, ruin them, then take her own life. That is a very dark plot, and not something I have come across before. I really enjoyed it though. I loved seeing Jem change as she gets deeper into the plan. Things do not go the way she expects at all after spending a year with these kids who she'd never even considered talking to before. The only thing that kept me from totally loving it though, was that I figured out who sent out the video and who the mystery guy was right away.Undone was great. I've never encountered anything like this before. Those last several chapters are fantastic! Knowing who really did it didn't stop me from being shocked at everything else that was going on. Then that ending? Geez. I honestly didn't expect it to turn out that way.

4.5 StarsWithin the first few chapter this book hits you right in the feels! Jem's best friend Kai has committed suicide after traumatically being forced out of the closet because someone emailed to everyone a video of him being intimate with another boy. We don't really get to know Kai firsthand before his death, but we learn about him through Jem's memories and the letters Kai leaves behind, with instructions that Jem open one each month on the date of his suicide. These notes are heartbreaking. Kai is a clever, sweet, funny, and supportive spirit and reading his letters made me angry that he felt the need to kill himself and angrier at the person(s) who led to this decision. It was extremely easy to empathize with Jem and feel her grief over losing her best and only friend. These letters, however, aren't meant to go into detail about the events leading up to his suicide. Kai emphatically urges Jem against investigating it, instead encouraging her to meet new people, become a stronger, more confident person, and move on in life despite this tragedy, but of course Jem can't just let the perpetrator get away with it. After receiving an anonymous note with the names of three boys belonging to Team Popular, Jem decides to infiltrate their elite group in order to take them down from the inside. Her path to justice becomes muddled, however, as she inadvertently finds herself becoming almost best friends with the Queen Bee and romantically involved with the school's Golden Boy, and several times she pauses to question whether her actions need to be continued. Ultimately, she decides that of course Kai is worth all of this, and best friends come before former enemies. It was interesting to watch everything unfold, and towards the end are a few twists that heightened the excitement of this book.Although Team Popular's ready inclusion of an outsider to whom none ever spoke is a little hard to believe, the only negative I saw in the book is something that another reviewer pointed out. In the days, hours, moments leading up to his suicide is when Kai writes his twelve letters to Jem. In each, his attitude is chipper, light, a bit snarky, and overall positive, especially as he's giving advice about Jem living a happy, bright life. I know that some individuals who decide to commit suicide feel at peace with themselves, they can have drastic changes in personality leading up to the act (e.g. from depressed to joyful), and make amends, but I just found it very hard to reconcile the tone of these letters with someone who felt he just could not live because of being forcefully outed via a video.The ending itself is very memorable and stands out. While some reviewers didn't like it, I actually found it intriguing and liked that Clarke finished her book in that way. The whole piece itself is very thought-provoking and subtly encourages readers to think about the after-effects of suicide, the ways in which friends and family members are affected, rather than solely on the events leading up to the act. Reading Kai's letters and the last moments Jem shared with Kai will definitely tug at your heartstrings, but watching Jem plot vengeance will hopefully make up for that. This is a tough read but very morbidly beautiful, and surely something I recommend.

I’m a huge Cat Clarke fan, however found this book much harder to read than any of her others. It is hard to read in the same way the Netflix series 13 reasons why is hard to watch. The book deals with very emotional subjects such as suicide, rape, and struggles with sexuality to name a few.In all honesty I thought the book was pretty messed up. Most of the characters were really damaged and screwed up and the things they did to each other were just downright nasty.Instead of finding a light at the end of the tunnel, and ways to cope with these issues it just got heavier and heavier which left me feeling disappointed especially with the target audience of teens in mind.Although the read was ok, it is the only book of hers that if I could turn back time and not read it I would rather leave this one unopened, it didn’t leave me in a happy place and frankly was just to heavy, dark, and twisty for my liking.Definitely do not recommend for anyone struggling with mental illness or any of the issues raised in the book as it does not show the best way of dealing with any of these issues or working through them for the better.

I actually, for the life of me, don't know how to start this review. There's so much I want to say. But as with all of Cat's previous work, you even so much as utter a couple of words and already something it a little spoilt. So tightly woven are her books, Undone, and of course her first two books, Entangled and Torn, that every page has fought a bloody battle and has earned it's place fair and square, it's there because it needs to be. Fair enough, there aren't revelations on every single page, but you can feel it building the whole time, always bubbling away gently until it gets a little too hot in the kitchen and it bubbles over and explosions begin to take place.It's weird to say, but I think Kai is my favourite character in the book. Yes, he dies at the start, but the more you learn about him, the letters he leaves Jem, he just seems like the person you'd love to be friends with. Always happy, always smiling and trying to make sure that you're okay, that you're happy, often unintentionally neglecting himself.I have been looking forward to Undone for so freaking long. From the moment I finished Torn, I just knew that I had to read whatever Cat wrote next. She is, quite frankly, a genius. She gets the reader. She gets the voice just right. She sucks you in with such skill and with such power that you're almost in a vice - you just can't tear your eyes away from the page no matter what is going on. So imagine the moment this dropped through my letterbox? Massive excitement. I did a little bit of a dance - I'm not proud of it, I most likely looked like a fool, but who cares? Not me! That's who! And after said dance, I ran upstairs to finish the book I was reading at the time so I could get started. And boy was it worth it.I will be honest, Undone isn't what I expected. I didn't expect there to be massive twists, but there are! I should of known! You're a sneaky one Cat! Very sneaky! I should of guessed from her previous books that there'd be some kind of twists, but oh no! I expected a pretty straight forward story of revenge. And boy was I wrong! As per the Cat Clarke usual, you are kept guessing and guessing and guessing again. What's going to happen next? How is so and so going to react to this? Massive gasp... I didn't see that coming at all!And the ending! WHAT?!!?!?!?! NO!!!!!! IT CAN'T END LIKE THIS! NO! NO! NOOOO! Argh! I cried. Not even going to cry. Tears. Felt like such a wreck at the end of this book but it is so worth it!As per usual the writing is of the highest calibre. It's so beautiful. So fluid. So easy. So natural. You just want to read it all day long! I'll be honest, Undone could of been double the length (it's already 502 pages, yippeee!!!) and I'd of loved every second and still not of wanted it to end. There's just something about Cat's writing that is so intoxicating, so compelling it just makes me want to weep that I will never be that good! She's pure awesome!I really don't know what else I can say. There's not much I can say... So I'll plead... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! JUST GO! GET THIS BOOK! NOW ON YOUR KINDLE, ON 31ST JANUARY IF YOU PREFER THINGS A BIT MORE PHYSICAL! JUST DO IT! PLEASE!Okay, that's enough caps... I just cannot express my love for this book, for all of Cat's work! It's just so bloody awesome! So emotional, so raw, so real! That's the thing that I think makes this book all the better. It could of happened. It does happen. It's a sad fact of life that while there are gay men (and of course women) out there that are perfectly comfortable in their skin and don't hide it, there are others that may appear confident, or not, that hate it, hide it, try to shy away from it, and ultimately there are those that go to the extremes. That's what I think gives this book so much power, so much punch. Kai could be real. He is real.I'm going to cut this review here, I think, before I ramble on anymore. Just please get it in your life! It's heartbreakingly beautiful and made of awesome!! Thank you so much to Quercus for my review copy and for publishing such awesomeness! And of course thanks to Cat for writing such an awesome story... And for making me cry! Cheers mate! Cheers! Haha!Originally posted on Empire Of Books.

This is a very well crafted and subtle story.As a mature reader I began with many misgivings: cheesy dialogue between between Jem and Kai, lack of counselling for either, lack of adult involvement or even knowledge of ongoing events, lack of background- mix of American/soap?, seemingly ultra-sophisticated lives of Year 11 students and so on. Kept on reading though, a real page turner, narrative hooks galore here. Clever but bleak ending.On reflection though realised how wrong I'd been. Everything is presented through teenager narrators, this is the inside world of Jem, Kai, Louise, Lucas et al, these are their lives and how they see themselves as written by Cat Clarke. Jem's oddness and the protective feelings that Kai has for her(Which continue after death thanks to his love for her) trigger her transformation into a blonde beauty and inform her every action. Every detail adds to our understanding of Jem and of Kai's relationship with her. The oversweet tone is revealed as real concern and understanding and patience too. Jem is a complex , fascinating character. Thank you, Cat Clarke

This is my fourth read by Cat Clarke now. She has written some brilliant books and this was no exception.I felt quite sorry for Jen, after her best friend, Kai, commits suicide, she is determined to have her revenge for him, despite knowing that he would want her to move on with her life.I felt that Undone had an air of intrigue to it and I was always left wondering what happens next. Plus I was always a bit suspicious of Jem's friends.Overall I found this book a real page turner and I can't wait to read another book by Cat Clarke, in fact I have my next one lined up ready.

Oh my God. When it comes to this book, there are no words. I have just had every emotion thrusted upon me. I am still struggling to think about anything else but this book. Wow. Its so cleverly written, you get in the head of Jem, you are terrified for her, pity her and even hate her.The characters are almost real but the problems this book covers are very real. The start grips you with all fingers, the middle is slower, giving you mixed feelings about the characters but the end is so real its unrealistic. The last chapter is a work of art, if your not already crying then you will be in the last chapter.The twist makes you think that something could happen that you wouldn't think would! (TRYING NOT TO SPOIL IT!) This book is just simply the best. The only reason you wouldn't read it is that its a bit rude!The letter aspect is brilliant! It ables Cat Clarke explain some thought-provoking things from Kai's view! I would like to know more about kai. Each letter is very carefully written with personality and emotion which kept me interested!The reason i choice this book is because the modern dilemmas it covers and the cover. I bought the sample first to make sure it wasn't some predictable love story. I haven't regretted buying this book!I would deffo recommend this book to any 12+ girl or boy which is ready for realistic issues written fantastically! Get ready for the tears as it was only at the end i realized how much i got attached to Jem!