I’ve actually owned this book for such a long time, but when I received the second book from the publisher, I kind of… had to read the first one. Which I’m glad about to be honest because I’ve been meaning to read it for ages! Dystopians are kinda like my fave…

Celestine North lives a perfect life. She’s a model daughter and sister, she’s well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she’s dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan.

But then Celestine encounters a situation in which she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule and now faces life-changing repercussions. She could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found FLAWED.

I devoured this book whole. I think it may have taken me a few hours as a whole to read this book because I was just so attached to the plot and I needed to find out what happened to Celestine. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you will know that I love a good dystopian, just read my review of Broken Sky…

Flawed is based around the concept of if an individual within society has made an error of judgement, they get sent to the Guild for a trial and are either branded flawed or not (but hardly anyone gets away with it). One of the things that I didn’t really like about this book was the ridiculous reasoning behind getting branded. You could literally step on someone’s foot by accident, not apologise, and then get branded. It was so far-fetched and quite hard to wrap my head around because it was such a long-shot of that happening in reality.

“We see being Flawed as a strength, Celestine. If you make a mistake, you learn from it. If you never make a mistake, you’re never the wiser. These so-called perfect leaders we have now have never made a mistake. How can they have learned what’s right and wrong, how could they have learned anything about themselves? About what they feel comfortable doing, about what they feel is beyond the scope of their character? The more mistake you have made, the more you have learned.” 
― Cecelia Ahern, Flawed

However, even though the idea was difficult to imagine, I do admit that it completely captured my attention – especially because of how the Flawed were treated. It mirrored how Jews were treated in World War II and slightly resembled how people of colour were (and still are) treated.

Another thing that I absolutely loved about this book was that the romance wasn’t a major part; it was just there. Art’s part of Celestine’s life so of course, she is going to talk about him. But I’m glad that there was little romance and Ahern focused on Celestine’s personal storyline and the relationships that she had with her family a couple of other people that were around her. I was also super happy that Ahern made her protagonist a badass female that wanted to stand up for what she believed in, yet didn’t step on people in order to do so. She still wanted to care for her family and see the good in people. She wasn’t arrogant, selfish or stupid. She thought things through and did what she deemed was right.

Flawed is a brilliant book that delves into the world of segregation, how people aren’t ‘perfect’ and make mistakes, how the media is taking over our lives and twists stories in order to favour governments or big organisations and how one female – by showing an act of kindness – turns the world upside down. I can’t wait to read the sequel, Perfect; it’s the final book is this gripping duology.