Ballad for a Mad Girl was slightly confusing, moderately spooky, and very mysterious. I liked that I could not for the life of me figure out how it was all going to come together. Honestly, I am still trying to figure it out. Was it mental illness? Or was there real paranormal stuff going down? The world may never know. I liked most of the characters but I had a few problems with Grace. She started out okay, an angsty, rebellious teen acting out after the death of her mom. I sympathized with her. However, throughout the book she isolated herself and became somewhat selfish because she just figured no one would understand what she was going through. Also, she kept talking about how funny she was but I felt like I never got to really see that. The middle section of this book was a little confusing for me. I found it hard to keep up and since we were seeing things through Grace’s point of view, we don’t really get the full picture and it seemed like there were too many pieces missing. With that being said, this book had a really good ending. I completely did not see it coming. It was able to answer so many questions, but then opened up a whole new set of questions to keep us wondering and thinking about the book after we are finished. Overall, there were a couple things about this book I would change, but I enjoyed reading it and I flew through it. Not to mention I love ghost stories. This author will certainly be on my radar in the future.

This book was surprisingly amazing. I loved it.
I'm not sure if it's because I normally do not read paranormal books, but the ending was very unexpected. It wasn't what I predicted at all and it worked so well it was absolutely amazing.
The middle of the book wasn't really my cup of tea. There was too many friend issues going back and forth over and over again with seemingly no progress. But the ending really made the entire book for me.

Grace Foley is troubled, by anyone's definition of the word. She's been a fan of increasingly outlandish pranks since she was small and has little regard for her own safety. Since the tragic death of her mother a couple of years previously, and the subsequent move away from the family farm. Now 17 Grace is facing her final year of school with her close group of friends but Grace is falling apart and concerning everyone.
Right from the start you know Grace is damaged. She's carrying a world of hurt inside her which is making her increasingly detached from those that love her. A crisis point at the start of the novel sees Grace dragged into a years old mystery and an obsession with a missing girl, and a dead boy. Only Grace can make the connection between these events which happened before she was born.
This is a brilliantly written book. Vikki Wakefield writes Grace beautifully. Her descent into madness and loss of control unfold against the backdrop of friends who are moving on and preoccupied with their own lives, Grace is left behind and then isolated because of what is happening inside her own head.
It's hard to categorise this book. There's an element of horror, certainly, but I don't like to read that genre and I coped fine with the level that this is pitched at. It's certainly YA and a very good example of it. So much YA is simply 'girl meets boy' but this is a real exposition of a teenager in crisis which deserves to be more widely read. Wakefield drags the reader along with Grace's journey and I couldn't put the book down. She's not the most likable character but she is often endearing and charming and it's hard not to feel sorry for her, even though she'd reject your pity if it was offered.
A rewarding and challenging read. Excellent.

It is really amazing the power of a good cover and title. The only thing that I really knew when I first found Ballad of a Mad Girl was the way the title looked. Despite the book being over three hundred pages, I read it in a single evening and now I will certainly be taking note of Vikki Wakefield’s work. This book was amazing, a near masterpiece. For all my reviews I attempt to explain what I liked and didn’t like and why so that you can decide if it is right for you. Please feel free to leave comments or message me, I am always happy to talk about reviews or the books themselves.

Who is Vikki Wakefield? Well this is my first foray into her so I decided to take a moment to read her biography. I always read about the author of a book before reading it to get a feel for them. There are a lot of benefits to doing this, but one reason is prejudices thrown into a book is not generally my taste so I try to avoid it. Vikki’s bio doesn’t tell me a whole lot about her feelings and preferences except that she seemed to have a lack of creative outlet in her first life in the daily grind. She talks about her past work in accounting and journalism and how she’s adventurous and frankly sounds like a lot of fun to hang out with. While I may not have a sense on how she feels about big issues, I’m very glad that she decided to become a writer.

One of the first things about reading books I’ve come to appreciate is the importance of design. This can the three act structure, or other foundational rules like following a guiding principal and keeping your story honest. In the case of a good book you won’t even notice these rules exist or are being followed because they will just feel natural. While it may seem constricting, the rules are actually very open ended. I will go over each of those three and how they apply to this book because I think they have a lot to do with what makes it so great.

Is Ballad of a Mad girl about mental illness or not? It isn’t instantly clear and I’m not going to spoil that for you, only that the book sets the stage very well so that you are able to accept and understand what is happening thorough out the rest of the story. I’m a big fan of ghost stories and this one certainly is one even if you wanted to say it was all a delusion. There is a great deal of suspense and a great deal of mystery, the latter of which you could probably largely solve on your own if you wanted to really put the pieces together. There are twists but none without adequate foreshadowing and the hints to solve what is going on, but it’s up to you if you want to try to put them together or just enjoy the ride. It’s satisfying either way and in no way utilizes the out of left field tricks to cheapen the experience of the mystery.

Characters all feel very real, with flaws and motivations all their own. The reader might have a window into more than the characters themselves, primarily in that we’re not in the same frame of mind as the characters, but this doesn’t affect what the characters know or do. The guiding principal is one that should be pretty clear to the reader early on. Ultimately this is a coming of age story and that is where every single aspect of it is rooted. Why is that important? Because it means that everything that happens in the story will fit and none of it feels like filler or added for cheap thrills. This is one of my biggest complaints about a book and many readers will eat that stuff up especially when it is a romance with a new romantic excitement. This book does not strive to give the reader any of those instant gratification pay offs, instead focusing on the long and hard earned. You the reader might find this to be not to your liking, this book is going to engage from start to finish but what it isn’t going to do is give you a quick fix.

Telling the truth is very important to me. Most things that can be considered plot holes are when books are being dishonest. Does this element fit the narrative, the characters and the reality that has been established? If not, it is lying. This book doesn’t tell lies. Every bit of it goes back to the reality that was laid out for you and even fits the guiding principal. Now herein lies probably the biggest debate you could have in the book. Before I mentioned that this is a ghost story but you could insist it is all delusion. That’s ultimately not the story it is trying to tell because the book isn’t about delusion, not really, it is about growing up. This means is questions about reality or fiction will be answered because they’re not supposed to be the central point. The book could have played more with the is she or isn’t she crazy but that wouldn’t have fit.

In most of my reviews I usually attempt to put a section in where I can talk about the bad of a book, but in this case that section is going to be absent. There simply wasn’t anything about this book I can really complain about. There are some matters of taste that might make an individual not want to read this book, but for me this book was entirely up my alley. A few notes, this book is a Young Adult. That’s kind of a vague thing since that category includes things like the maze running with some rather graphic acts of child murders or hunger games, so to be more specific in what I mean is that this book is rather simple in terms of light and dark. We’re only going to skirt a little bit of assault and bullying and darker themes and unhappy endings really aren’t applicable. Some dark stuff does happen and is strangely glossed over though, possibly owing onto the genre. Once again, I chalk that up to the age range, the book could of probably focused a lot on the emotional trauma of the bullying and how the characters reacted but it just doesn’t. Frankly this is the biggest criticism I could come up with and it isn’t even a good point because to focus on the bullying wouldn’t of fit the guiding principal. In other words, it would have been a different book. Does that mean the toe dipped in darker subject matter is out of place? Well not exactly, it does fit the story, but at the same time I could see the argument why it shouldn’t have been included. If it would bother you to touch but largely gloss over this aspect then you might be bothered by it.

At the end of the day I found Ballad of a Mad Girl to be a near masterpiece if not complete perfection. I kind of hate giving five-star reviews because it sounds kind of cheap, or pandering, but I hope my review going into depth has helped you see that I am not doing this. There certainly is a matter of taste and for me this book fit my interest very well, but that doesn’t mean it will be universally loved. Romance novels are for instance very popular and this book is not that. If you’re hoping for high flying action then you’re also looking in the wrong place. For what this book is, the execution, the writing style and the characters I do feel this book couldn’t have done better. I would recommend this book as an essential read.