What Happens in Aruba Doesn't Stay in Aruba

Jessie Young

Dangerous Girls
By Paula Hawkins

Ironic, isn’t it? You go on vacation just to wind up in jail or maybe even dead. That’s what happened to a group of friends from Boston, Massachusetts. They were seniors in high school who went to Aruba for their last spring break together. But things didn’t go the way they were supposed to -they went quite the opposite, actually- three people wouldn’t be coming back home. One of the group of friends was randomly murdered, and two others of the friends were put in police custody and are on trial for her murder. This is all happening while they are supposed to be on vacation. Anna and Tate -the two being charged with her murder- are a couple, or were before this all happened. Apparently, they were not in as much shock and as upset as everyone else, so they decided that they were the most suspicious. The law enforcement system in Aruba is not very strong, and not very intelligent, which makes it easy for them to point fingers at Anna and Tate.

I believe that this book is very good and would appeal to people who enjoy reading in the mystery drama. The way the book is set up, with little parts of the past being revealed as the main plot moved forward, always keeps you on your toes. There are always new leads, new branches of information being given to the readers. “I wasn’t the only one off on my own, remember? I took a nap, and when I woke up, you were gone” (103). Little clues like that were always being revealed. So I recommend this book to people who enjoy the mystery genre or books that are dramatic and action-packed.

The main character - Anna - was a big part of the book that I felt I was able to connect to and I felt that she and her struggles really spoke to me. She had issues at school, meeting new people when she first moved to Hillcrest, the private high school they all attended. She didn’t get along with the popular group, that’s for sure, and she kind of had to figure everything out for herself. But what spoke to me was the characteristic she had about not caring if she got in with the popular group or not, just trying to survive as best she could. I think that not everyone always thinks like that, that sometimes they just to want to perfectly fit in not live for themselves. In fact, someone points this out to Anna early in the book; “yeah, you and Elise pretty much keep to yourselves” (92). Another thing that spoke to me was the theme of the book. Trust. This whole book and all of its events are based on trust; who broke it, who they trusted and shouldn’t have, who they should have trusted, what they shouldn’t have trusted with other people. So many secrets were revealed. “One moment. One picture. One glimpse -- that’s all it takes to make someone think they know the truth” (106). This was the kind of trust that was present in the book, which leads to many of the book's conflicts. I just thought that it was interesting how much this whole plot was based on trust.

This article talks about how important trust is and what it can do when broken, when lost, and when it’s just simply not there. Or even when it is there what can happen.
Clifford, Tracy E. “Building Trust in Relationships.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 4 June 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-e-clifford/relationships-trust_b_3000579.html.