Review: Get Even (Don't Get Mad #1) by Gretchen McNeil

Get Even (Don't Get Mad #1) by Gretchen McNeil

Published September 16th 2014 by Balzer + Bray

Paperback, 389 pages

Series: Don't Get Mad 

Genre: YA Contemporary

Source:  I got a copy of this book from the publisher  in exchange of an honest review.
Amazon | Goodreads

Summary from Goodreads

The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars in Gretchen McNeil’s witty and suspenseful novel about four disparate girls who join forces to take revenge on high school bullies and create dangerous enemies for themselves in the process.

Bree, Olivia, Kitty, and Margot have nothing in common—at least that’s what they’d like the students and administrators of their elite private school to think. The girls have different goals, different friends, and different lives, but they share one very big secret: They’re all members of Don’t Get Mad, a secret society that anonymously takes revenge on the school’s bullies, mean girls, and tyrannical teachers.

When their latest target ends up dead with a blood-soaked “DGM” card in his hands, the girls realize that they’re not as anonymous as they thought—and that someone now wants revenge on them. Soon the clues are piling up, the police are closing in . . . and everyone has something to lose.

No, just no. I don't really know where to begin reviewing this book.

Let's start with the characters. This book follows four girls Bree, Olivia, Kitty, and Margot who this story seems to revolve around. They are a bunch who form a group called DGM (Don't Get Mad, if you cannot tell from the title), four girls that just decide to come together and become a secret society that takes revenge on the bullies in their school. This is where it got confusing from the start, because when you have four main characters that don't really differ in personality or behavior in the book and don't have their own chapters – everything kind of blends together. I had a hard time trying to distinguish one from another and somewhere halfway into the book I just kind of gave up and tried to enjoy the rest of the story, which in itself was hard...

DGM is suppose to be this secret society that takes revenge on this nasty people of their private school, but in the actual book they only had one scene of this before the entire thing blew up in their face and suddenly their next victim is dead and they are blamed for murder.

The secondary characters in this book, which I guess was the bullies and the teachers were the worse thing ever. It was easy to hate them, and due to their unrealistic behavior, made it hard to keep reading this book. Father Uberti and Coaches behaviors, the two prominent adults in this book was absolutely disgusting and very unrealistic .I refuse to believe that the private school parents who PAY big money for their kids to go to this school have turned a blind eye on all the bullying, especially since some of it is actually coming from the Father and Coach. I would assume action against them both should have been taken a long time ago. Especially when the Coach gathers up a group of bullies and practically instructs them to beat a confession out of one of their suspects. If bullying is so bad in a private school where parents pay to send their kids, why aren't these rich kids complaining more? Unrealistic, badly executed.

To top off my annoyance at this was the badly written romance, an unnecessary triangle and a really really terrible ending. After everything I went through I was hoping for a resolution to let me know I did not waste my time with this book, no such luck. In fact, it ended in an epic fail cliffhanger that sitting here thinking about it only makes me that much more unhappy with the overall result.