Review of Get Even by Gretchen McNeil

This Review of Get Even by Gretchen McNeil will give you the scoop on this book on my list of 2010s YA books like Pretty Little Liars.

Get Even (Don’t Get Mad #1) by Gretchen McNeil
Published by Harper Teen on September 16, 2014

Source: e-ARC from publisher for review

Why is Get Even on my list of Books Like Pretty Little Liars?

• Get Even has ALL the Pretty Little Liars vibes
• Four private school students are part of a secret group
• BUT someone wants revenge on them
• Clues and creepy messages ensue.

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Review of Get Even by Gretchen McNeil

I love revenge shows. I love Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family. But I haven’t really found a YA book that does a good job with the whole revenge thing.

Most 2010s YA revenge books fall into the “childish pranks” category rather than the “I will make you sorry you ever lived” category.

Books like Pretty Little Liars, though fun and addictive on screen, often come off as cartoonish and improbable on the page. I even think that the original book that the show is based on has this issue. YES, in this case the book was better.

While Get Even and I got off to a bit of a rocky start, I ended up enjoying it overall.

The beginning of the book had waaaay too many characters for me. I counted twenty named characters in the first 15% of the book. *head explodes*  

But gradually, I came to figure out who everyone was and what they had to do with the story.  I also must confess that I kept getting the four main characters mixed up at first.  I had to make notes: “politician’s daughter,” “Asian girl not good at math,” “actress eating w/disorder & Type-A mother,” and “computer nerd w/ anxiety.”

Get Even features some familiar Pretty Little Liars staples, like hacking into a school video presentation — remember that Pretty Little Liars fashion show episode? No, not that weird wedding fashion show, but the Rosewood Charity Fashion show, when “A” hacks into the projector and suddenly the screen says “the bitch is dead” with Ali going up in flames. That kind of stuff. Good times!

That brings me to one of the things I loved about Get Even: the humor. Like Pretty Little Liars, which often cracks me up out of nowhere, really funny, clever things would just pop up in Get Even when I least expected it.

I loved this hilarious character called Ed the Head who was one part Anthony Michael Hall nerd character from John Hughes movies and one part Badger from Firefly. One of the things Ed sells on the black market is junk food, because the school has banned unhealthy food from campus. So relatable.

Overall, Get Even carried on the Pretty Little Liars tradition. You’ll love it!

Check out my post on Books To Read if You Like Pretty Little Liars!

I’ve also reviewed other books by Gretchen McNeil

Review of 3:59 by Gretchen McNeil

I’m Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Gretchen McNeil

Review of Ten by Gretchen McNeil