Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Busted by Gina Ciocca is a contemporary young adult fiction novel that follows the journey of the main character Marissa. Marissa has been placed in a position that she did not necessarily want to be in after helping her best friend. Busted focuses on the lengths of friendship, trust, forgiveness, high school drama, and deciding how far you will go to capture the story.  Marissa is a spunky main character who wants to go to college to study journalism, but when choosing how to pay for school, an option is thrown into her lap. This new option may or may not have consequences. This new opportunity is thrown into her lap by her ex-best friend Kendall. Kendall reenters Marissa’s life after finding out that Marissa helped her best friend Charlie, who goes to a different school than Marissa, bust Charlie’s boyfriend cheating. Kendall begs Marissa to do the same with her boyfriend after she assumes that he is cheating. Marissa attends the same school as Kendall’s boyfriend and accepts the new challenge. The story continues with a lot of twists and turns and betrayal. Marissa must learn to put her feelings aside during the investigation and not get tangled in Kendall’s love life. This story has high school drama written all over it.

This is the synopsis of the book found on Amazon:

And her next case? It’s for ex-frenemy Kendall. She’s convinced her boyfriend, TJ, has feelings for someone else and persuades Marissa to start spying on him. But the more Marisa gets to know sincere and artistic TJ, the more she starts to fall for him. Worse yet, the feelings seem to be mutual. Marisa knows she needs to give up her investigation—and the spoken-for guy who may just be the love of her life. Then she uncovers new secrets about Kendall and TJ, secrets that take “cheater” to a whole new level…

I purchased this book after reading the portion of the synopsis above. This sounds like it is going to be amazing, right? I thought that it would be amazing.  I liked this book and thought it had a good storyline but the plot twist was a lacking. There was a lot of build-up to the plot, but I did not think it met my expectations. I assumed there would be more drama or connection between the characters. I mean everything felt a little bit forced. Of course with most contemporary novels, it has a cliche happy ending. I wanted more development in this story. There could’ve been more done with this book with the title. It is definitely a contemporary drama, mystery, romance novel. I did love the development of the friendship between Charlie and Marisa. I love the style of writing but not necessarily all the content.

I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in a bit of cliche high school drama with a little bit of romance and betrayal.

Disclaimer: This review is solely my honest opinion. I purchased this book on my own from Barnes and Noble. Below is a link for you to purchase the book as well. The opinions in this review do not reflect the views of the author.

You can purchase a copy of this book from Amazon  or Barnes and Noble. This book was published on January 2, 2018.