"Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people." 
 - Socrates 
 Reading The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu is very familiar to me. Not in the 'this book is a copy of something I've read before' but more in a 'I've lived a life like this before' that it was so eerily similar it wasn't even funny. That is probably what made me both love and hate The Truth About Alice. Alright so maybe that statement isn't really accurate. I loved The Truth About Alice and I hated that 14 years after I left high school we even still need to be having conversations about 'slut shaming', 'bullying', 'gossip', 'slander', 'defamation of character', or just the plain fact that we are still 'tearing down others just to build ourselves up' (Covey, Sean - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens). 
 The story being told in differing view points really helped to dive into the issues and to expose the motivations of everyone involved. What I find particularly interesting was even though we do hear from Alice through her interaction with others, we never really get her side of it all. Interesting, and all too familiar. 
 There is the thing that happens when people die, especially someone who dies at a young age. The people left behind tend to get caught up in the tragedy of the usually 'senseless' death, that they remember these rose tinted, idealistic versions of the person who died and not the mortal, and ultimately flawed person that they were. All of a sudden the person who passed was a veritable saint, who could never do anything wrong, and to even suggest otherwise pretty much amounts to blasphemy. Heaven help you if you are one of the few left behind that doesn't agree with that generally accepted viewpoint and remembrance. And that is where we find Alice in The Truth About Alice. Lied about and slandered by someone, who while dying at such a tragically young age, has managed through his own lies and arrogance to pretty much damn a young girl to be universally hated and reviled by her peers and virtually everyone in her home town as both a slut and the cause of his death. Never mind that he was a liar, or a douche, and the only one really responsible for his death is himself. God forbid anyone ever actually ask Alice and allow her to tell her 'truth', because why would we ever accept the word of a 'slut'? 
 "Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear." 
 - Paulo Coelho 
 The bottom line: The Truth About Alice is a quick, easy and important read about a topic that we hear about in the news all to often, 'Slut Shaming'.