Sweet Deceit by Kate Brian

Ariana Osgood has been tapped for Stone and Grave, Atherton-Pryce Hall's most exclusive secret society. But so has her arch-nemesis, Kaitlynn. They go head-to-head during Hell Week, but Ariana has worked too hard for her luxe life at APH to give it up without a fight. When the competition turns deadly, only one girl will walk away from it alive...

Yes, I'll admit, Kate Brian's Private and Privilege series' are my guilty pleasure reads. I'll be the first to admit they're not the best books out there, but I will continue to devour each and every one of them anyway.

Privilege is quite different from Private. To start, Ariana is a murderer. She's managed to escape prison but continues to be faced with all the problems that come along with assuming someone else's identity. While the problems continue to flow fairly well, I still found myself thinking "how in the world can this many bad things happen to one person?!?" Maybe that many bad things would happen to me if I was a killer, but things certainly never get that bad in my day-to-day life. On the other hand, Brian certainly brings about the conflicts in fantastic surprise twists.

And now for the characters. Somehow, Kate Brian gets you feeling sympathy for one killer and scorn for another. Ariana is such a unique character. It's obvious she still belongs in a mental institution yet I still found myself rooting for her at times. And I've gotta hand it to the girl, she's a top-notch evil schemer. While Sweet Deceit has plenty of fun and unique characters, it simply has to many characters for my taste. I was finding it difficult to keep track of them all let alone put faces to them. It's not fair when I have to ignore some of the characters simply so I can focus on the main story.

I love the premise for this book and the series overall. It's not every day you come across a story and see it through the eyes of a killer. Especially when the killer is a teenage girl.

As a side note complaint: what was with the gum? I can't get into it without ruining things, but I'll just say it seemed like a plot hole to me. Small, maybe, but it seemed glaring to me while I was reading through it.

Final thoughts: If you're up for a private school book with a bit of a twist, this is definitely a good choice. Be prepared for a little darkness, though.


Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publish Date: June 2010
Pages: 214
Series: Privilege #4
Rating: 4 stars