When I first read the book, despite how much I loved it, I couldn’t help but thinking, can someone really be that duplicitous? I had a hard time wrapping my mind around how someone could seem to the people closest to her to be one person, but in reality be someone else.

You know what’s weird about when you doubt something? Life has this strange tendency to find a way (often unpleasant) to let you know, hey, it’s true, that kind of stuff really DOES happen in real life.

About a week and a half after I finished reading Beautiful Malice, I got my confirmation that people really can be just as two-sided as Alice was. Here’s the story:*

***

A few years ago, I was really close friends with this person. We did nearly everything together, and I could probably count the days in a six month period that we didn’t see each other on one hand. I knew this person inside and out. Or so I thought.

Recently I learned that this old friend of mine did something terrible. Like, really, really, makes-you-ill-to-hear-about-it terrible. And it wasn’t a one-time slip-up (though, honestly, I don’t think those exist in a case like this); it was something that had been going on for years. And nobody know. On the outside, this person was still the same wonderful, charming, fun person I knew back then. But beneath the person everyone saw, there was another, completely different person. A person who could do things that the person I knew never would. And even though the two of us have not been friends for four years, it still really made me question a lot about our friendship and my ability to see people for who they are.

My first thoughts–after the initial shock–were along the lines of what has changed? How could the person I knew have changed into this other person in the few years since we were so close? The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I don’t know that this old friend of mine has really changed. On the surface, people still saw the person I knew. There wasn’t a different person there as far as anyone–even those closest to this person–could tell.

After realizing this, my thought process changed. Now I wonder how long? How long has this person been living a lie? How could I not tell what was going on beneath the surface in all the time we were together? I know I shouldn’t beat myself up about it–I mean, everyone else was fooled by the same act that fooled me. But at the same time, I can’t help it. I guess I am still just in a little bit of shock.

In the end though, one thing I do know is that Rebecca James got it right when she wrote Beautiful Malice. People like Alice really do exist. This is not a comforting thought.

***

*Yeah, so I tried to keep the story as ambiguous as possible while still getting my point across. Maybe I just made a confusing mess of what I was trying to say. If so, sorry about that. I just didn’t want to spell out details about what happened. Many of my readers already know who and what I am talking about (and many more of you can probably take a pretty close guess at the what based on what I wrote), but I feel no need to be specific.