The Almost Truth was such an awesome book!! It is definitely one of my favorites from Eileen Cook. I absolutely love the cover!! Since reading the summary I was intrigued with the plot about a young con-artist and how she wants to improve her life and go to the college of her dreams. Eileen Cook is a great writer who can grab your attention with a good plot and lovable characters. Sadie is anything but perfect in her life, growing up on a trailer park resort island. Growing up her father has been in and out of prison, and Sadie has accepted her fate and made the best of it. As her determination to leave to follow her dream college at Berkley, California as a way to start a new life. She has money saved up by working some cons, which aren't big ones that get her caught. The surprise that her mother then drains her bank account and now she has no college money to leave, and in order to leave. Sadie comes up with one of the biggest cons in order to make the money quick and gets the help of her best friend Brendan to help. I loved all the characters especially Sadie because she is like any other teenager who wants to get away from her parents, has a sense of humor and is living a hard life. She is nothing like her father, she does the cons for a reason and does it in a morally way. She has a drive which makes her decide to leave the island. I liked her as a characters because she grows during the con and at times she feels close to this character who she is impersonating, so she does get confused and feels lost, but in the end still is determined to her goal. The romance in the novel wasn't the main topic, but it did give me the great feeling that she did end up with the right guy because he is so loveable. It was emotional and the plot adds up to the end because those twists and turns give The Almost Truth meaning. I really loved this books and the ending was great! It had everything that I liked in a YA contemporary. Definitely pick this one up!!

Haven't we all fantasized at some point that we could lead a different life and be another person? After her mother completely clears out her bank account, Sadie forms an ambitious plan to earn back her college money in a short period of time which involves the disappearance of a rich girl named Ava McKenna who went missing 15 years ago. However, the more Sadie learns about the missing girl and their similarities, the more she begins to believe in her own con and spun lies... I really liked Sadie as a protagonist! She's flawed and makes immoral decisions, but she's well-meaning and only trying to escape her trailer park life through the only solution she thinks she has available. Sadie's father has been in and out of jail her whole life and her Mom hasn't really bothered with any real mothering since Sadie was a little girl, so she's used to being independent and taking caring of herself. Oh Brendan, how I loved your moments with Sadie and wished for more. Brendan and Sadie have been best friends ever since they were children, and have always looked out for one another. She may try to deny his feelings for her, but you can tell just how much he truly cares for despite his player reputation. He's the voice of reason in the novel, and while he tries to help Sadie pull off the con, he also doesn't want to see her lose herself in the process. Sadie may want to forget her past and reinvent herself when she leaves for college, but Brendan has always accepted her for who she is, never judging her far from perfect family. The Almost Truth is Eileen Cook's best novel yet! Surprisingly unpredictable, The Almost Truth is far from being an average coming-of-tale tale and I would highly recommend the novel to fans of YA contemporary fiction in a heartbeat. I seriously didn't want the book to come to an end! You can also read this review at: http://midnightbloomreads.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-almost-truth-by-eileen-cook.html

You'd think you'd dislike a character who shows herself to be, from the first page of the book, a con artist, but in the case of Sadie, it's impossible not to like her. She comes by her skills quite honestly: she's the daughter of a swindler who spends more time in jail than out of it. But Sadie's a con artist with a dream and a (somewhat of a) conscience and she's about to go straight. Until she finds out her college money has been stolen (by her mother!) and everything she's worked for is gone. Maybe one last con, a really big one, will get her what she needs, but as she digs deeper to pull off the heist, she uncovers secrets about herself and her family that threaten to blow her world apart. I loved Sadie's voice in this book - Eileen Cook's characters never disappoint, but Sadie was particularly fun to read about. This plot twists and turns kept me guessing until the end, making this a real page-turner. And there's romance, rounding out the awesomeness.