Review for Undone by Cat Clarke

Undone by Cat Clarke 
Publisher: Quercus
Release: 31st January 2013
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Source: Received from the publisher for review



Goodreads Summary:

"Jem Halliday is in love with her gay best friend. Not exactly ideal, but she's learning to live with it.

Then the unspeakable happens. Kai is outed online ... and he kills himself.

Jem knows nothing she can say or do will bring him back. But she wants to know who was responsible. And she wants to take them down.

A searing story of love, revenge and betrayal from a bestselling author."

Review 
There is something about Cat Clarke’s writing that is so honest and raw that you immediately connect with her characters and dive head first into their lives, thoughts and feelings. Cat had me captivated once again with Undone and had my attention long after I actually finished the book because I couldn’t get this story out of my head.

Undone is a book about grief, revenge and all-consuming rage. Our heroine Jem has been in love with her neighbour and gay best friend Kai for as long as she’s known him. Only Jem and Kai’s family know that Kai’s gay and so when he is outed before he’s ready in the worst imaginable way with a sex tape Kai takes his own life. Jem feels like she can’t go on without him and is ready to follow in his footsteps when she receives a series of letters from Kai one for every month during the first year of his death. This gives Jem a part of Kai to hold on to and a year to find who did this to Kai and seek vengeance before she takes her life.

The characters in this novel are all so broken. When Kai commits suicide Jem is left with nothing but this rage and need for answers to the point where it becomes her only reason to live and even though this makes her not the nicest of characters I was totally with Jem and understood her reasoning for doing the things she does. Although Kai is dead for the majority of the book, we get to know him through his letters to Jem and her memories of him. The chapters where he is outed were so gut wrenching to read as this confident lovely person crumbles into despair.

Undone has several hard hitting subjects it tackles throughout the book including homophobia, bullying, grief and suicide to name a few. What I took away from the book was the importance of letting go and forgiveness, of not letting hate and anger consume us, and the message that it WILL get better.

I was in total awe of Undone and it would have been a perfect read had I not have figured out the “who done it” pretty early on. That being said there were lots of other twists that I didn’t see coming at all and although it was obvious to me who outed Kai and what had happened, overall this book was so good that knowing didn’t really affect my enjoyment of it at all.

The ending of this book literally took my breath away and I found it such a fitting end. Overall Undone is a beautifully crafted novel that I couldn’t put down. If Cat Clarke hasn’t already established herself as one of Britain’s finest YA authors Undone is sure to do it!