Review: Gone Too Far by Natalie D. Richards

Title: Gone Too Far
Author: Natalie D. Richards
Rating: 3/5 Stars
Paperback, 304 Pages
Published January 2015
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Summary: Piper Woods can't wait for the purgatory of senior year to end. She skirts the fringes of high school like a pro until the morning she finds a notebook with mutilated photographs and a list of student sins. She's sure the book is too gruesome to be true, until pretty, popular Stella dies after a sex-tape goes viral. Everyone's sure it's suicide, but Piper remembers Stella's name from the book and begins to suspect something much worse. Drowning in secrets she doesn't want to keep, Piper's fears are confirmed when she receives an anonymous text message daring her to make things right. All she needs to do is choose a name, the name of someone who deserves to be punished...

We were hosts on Gone Too Far's blog tour a few weeks back, and it seemed like an interesting enough book, so I decided to buy a copy last week and give it a try. And I'm glad I did! The summary itself is intriguing: a girl finds a book of student sins, gets mysterious text messages from an unknown source, and gets the chance to spill the secrets she's found - by telling the anonymous text messager who deserves to be taken down.

So, long story short, even if Piper isn't the one taking these people down, she's the middle-man. Supplying the names of the guilty to make them pay. For Stella. And for tons of other bad things they've done.

It's only fair, right?

This book was great at arising my frustration, but not because I didn't like it. For the first half of the book, I kept internally screaming, "NO, PIPER! BAD! WRONG! THIS WILL LEAD TO VERY BAD THINGS!" Piper, shocked over Stella's suicide and feeling guilty for not doing anything to stop it, feels that the only way to truly avenge Stella's death and redeem herself as a person is to knock the popular kids who've committed a few sins themselves down a couple of notches.

That's what she tells herself while she feeds this information to the mysterious texter. And once more and more of these people are being punished, and it eventually starts to cross lines that makes Piper uncomfortable, she decides to call it quits and bow out.

Which is very great and honorable and noble, except for the fact that her partner refuses to let her get out. She has to keep sending names of people to be attacked, or she'll pay the price herself.

The whole theme of the story is that Piper basically becomes a vigilante and takes justice into her own hands. At first, this may seem like a good idea, but as time goes on she comes to realize that she's in way over her head and it needs to stop. The question is how she plans on making it stop.

This was a very interesting and enjoyable book, and I really did like it. It shows a lot about the social structure of high school and how the different cliques tend to judge one another without really getting to know one another as people. Everyone identified one another by the group they belonged to, and it led to seriously messed up delusions that started the whole revenge mess in the first place. Towards the end, though, they start to view one another as people and less as labels. Which is something that we all need to learn.

All in all, Gone Too Far is a good book about vigilante justice and pretty much what not to do if you find yourself in a compromising situation. Piper's decisions may have led to some not so great things, but in the end she grew as a person and truly did learn from her mistakes. It's a great book about the growth of character and how to fix negative situations. Natalie D. Richards is a very good author and I hope to read more of her work in the future!

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