The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

Ella Black seems like a normal 17 year-old girl but she has two secrets. One she knows about: her violent, sadistic alter ego Bella. The other secret is one kept by her parents and the fear that Ella might discover this secret, cause them to pull her out of school without warning and take her to Brazil. Ella is cross and when she can't get a rational reason from her parents she resorts to some snooping. It is then that she discovers that she is adopted. Spinning out of control, she runs away and eventually ends up in the favelas in RIo. However, her search for information about her birth mother leads her to an even greater secret.
The subtitle, '40 days until she dies', along with the countdown chapter headings, give the impression that show more this is a thriller that will end badly for Ella. However, Ella's story is not really a thriller and the subtitle is quite misleading. It is the story of a messed up teenage girl trying to cope with the upending of her life. Ella is often annoying and self-centred (just like real teenagers) and the way she falls in love at first sight is a bit unbelievable. However, the story of her time in Rio is interesting and the ramifications of the final secret are fascinating. This book is more suited to older teens but even older teens may find the description of an incident of animal cruelty in the first chapter disturbing. show less

I have always believed that authors of YA books like to deal in harrowing topics, the more tear-jerking the better. This one opens with a scene of graphic violence against an animal which was completely unnecessary. It may have set the scene for Ella and her alter ego, Bella (a contraction of Bad Ella) but again, unnecessary to the plot. Instead, it put me off the story and my interest never caught on. I found the characters ranged from boring and silly to obnoxious. Barr scored a "miss" on this one.

Interesting novel in that it twisted away from what I thought was going to happen. Ella Black is the main character who battles an alter-ego in her head that she calls Bella. Ella is the perfect daughter and student, Bella is the complete opposite and draws evil pictures and hurts animals ( she kills a baby bird that the cat brings in with a hammer - ew!) . As Ella struggles to fight with this illness, she notices her parents seeming very agitated and thinks they are getting a divorce. Then suddenly, out of the blue, they turn up to school and tell her that they are taking her to Rio. This is all very strange as they seem to have packed nothing and Ella has to endure the flight there in her school uniform. Why the rush? What's going on? show more is it because of something Bella did , or did one of her parents do something?

Without giving too much of the plot away, Ella meets a gorgeous boy called Christian and falls hopelessly in love with him but before things get too close, she discovers something about her past and the stress of this causes Bella to erupt. Ella runs away to the slums of Rio, changing her name and getting a charity job teaching English. She even cuts off Christian?

Will the boyfriend or the parents or someone else track Ella down?

If you can suspend your disbelief over WHY the parents take Ella to Rio, then the story works fine , but generally speaking,it's a pretty typical teenage girl angst story that my students will LOVE. show less

This one just didn't work for me. I didn't enjoy any of it and it was a real struggle to finish. Even though it dealt with some quite serious issues like poverty, mental health, self harm and potential rape, everything was so unbelievable that it was difficult to take the story seriously. The romance was the worst insta-love where they had only said hello to each other but fell completely in love to the point that he was willing to give her large amounts of money and overlook that she had violently assaulted someone. I almost understand why she latched on to him so quickly as she was quite messed up and sheltered her whole life but I do not get why he fell so hard for her. She was unlikable and made the stupidest decisions possible. show more These poor decisions led to some pretty unlikely situations and this made it hard to engage with the story or the characters. This wasn't a terrible book as I did finish it but I am glad it is over.

Thank you to LibraryThing for providing a free copy for review. show less

I was really excited to get into this book, unfortunately the excited faded shortly into it. It paints itself as a thriller/mystery but it was poorly handled. I was honestly confused right from the beginning. Trust me, I'm not bashing mental illness at all, but it was thrown into the mix too quickly and without explanation and *slight spoiler* mental illness is no excuse for animal abuse. I would have DNF'd this book shortly thereafter but its a pretty short read so I figured I'd power through and just see if it got better. It didn't. The story is all over the place and the events that happen are so ridiculous that you spend the whole time going "that's never going to happen like that". Ella comes off as a spoiled little brat and must show more have the best luck in the entire world for everything to just happen like that for her. It's super unrealistic. My 2 star rating for specifically for the ending. Although the writing was as weak as a plot line, the ending did surprise me. show less

I really enjoyed Emily Barr's previous novel, so even though I don't read much YA, I was excited to pick this one up... Unfortunately, I found the plot to be quite amateurish and the supposed twists and turns just didn't keep me interested. Though there were some great scenes in Rio, I found the main character's behaviour and choices too frustrating and I ended up struggling to get to the end. For people looking for plot-driven YA, I would suggest checking out Barr's first novel and giving this one a miss.

This novel is the story of Ella Black, a regular teenager with a dark side she calls Bella. One day, just before she turns 18, her parents pick her up from school and take her out of the country without telling her the reason why. This was a really enjoyable read and though a young adult novel, it entertained me as an adult reader. It keeps the reader wanting to keep turning pages to see what was going to happen yet!