Nothing impressive. Rather surreal.
Move along now... ( )

At first I already felt like this was just going to be an alright read. It didn't seem like it was going anywhere but, having read previous books by Eileen Cook I should have known better. It got quite interesting, quite fast when I knew what Sadie's real ultimate con was going to be. Although it was fairly predictable what was going to happen when you got a little further into the story, The Almost Truth, was a light and entertaining read - just what I needed after a stress-filled week.

Sadie's life is one she desperately wants to run away from. She lives in a beat up trailer with her mom who always works and expects Sadie to live the same way and her dad who's always either in jail or coming up with his next scam. She might not admit it but she's also running away from her best friend Brendan who she made a mistake with and has been trying to avoid ever since. She doesn't get the chance to reinvent herself when her mom takes all her money from her savings to get her dad out of jail. Albeit Sadie didn't get all that money from just hard work. She took up her father's trade of conning people here and there so she can save up the cash to go away to college and get off her island. Still furious, Sadie doesn't know what to do to get all her money back. She gets an idea in the strangest possible way when she discovers something that happened long ago in her hometown.

The mystery wasn't all there because I figured out what was going to happen right away. I think Cook planned it that way though because she gave pretty obvious hints about what was going on throughout the story. It's more about the journey than the actual reveal. Although, the story of what happened could have been more shocking for me to enjoy the ending more. I liked Sadie and her story. I liked her journey and her self-discovery that no matter where you come from you are who you are and no one can change that. I didn't particularly like the romance in this story. I couldn't feel the connection with her and Brendan probably because she tried to keep her distance from him so much. Regardless of some things I would have liked different, The Almost Truth absorbed my attention and gave me a quick escape into the mysterious life of Sadie. -3.5 stars ( )

Sadie's living on an island in Washington State. While it's small, it still has two hugely different cultures. She's part of the hardscrabble one, living in a rundown trailer with her mom while she runs small cons to get enough money for the down payment on what she hopes is the start of a new life, her freshman year at Berkeley where she'll study architecture. Her dad is in jail for the latest of many poorly thought out cons. Her relationship with long time friend Brendon took an unexpected turn into strange and unsettling after she talked him into having sex with her.
On the other side of the spectrum is the rich crowd who flock to the big resort hotel where both Sadie and her mother work. It's a lifestyle that attracts her, but is beyond her reach. When she opens up her latest bank statement and realizes that it reads zero, her whole world begins to fall apart, or so she thinks. Her mother took the money to pay a shady lawyer for an appeal to get dad out of jail early. Sadie is enraged, but there's nothing she can do.
When she sees a computer-enhanced photo of Ava McKenna a girl who vanished from the hotel when she was three, it looks a lot like her. Can she and Brendon work some sort of con to get her tuition money back? The McKenna's are having a big function at the hotel in a few weeks to highlight the foundation they set up after losing Ava. The nanny who was supposed to be watching Ava is a possibility as they learn she lied about where she was the day Ava vanished, can they con her into attending?.
While you can predict the outcome of the book early on, it's the way you, the reader get there that makes this a neat and fun read. Teens who like romance with a bit of mystery will really like this one. ( )

This was a fast fun read. It was predictable but enjoyable. Sadie has always wanted to move away from the island off the coast of Washington state where she grew up. Her parents are a hotel maid and a con artist who have done their best but haven't been able to provide Sadie with a lot of material things. When the truth of her past is revealed Sadie begins to realize what is most important in life. This book wasn't the next great American novel but it was enjoyable. I would recommend this to fans of Meg Cabot or contemporary fiction ( )