This review comes with bonus hate. — 15 weeks ago
The very first paragraph of this book was terrible. After one paragraph, I was waiting for the style to improve.
After the first page of this book, I was grinding my teeth over the clumsy style and waiting less patiently for it to improve.
Writing style didn’t improve.
If this was marketed as your basic mindless suspense novel, I could have forgiven mediocre-to-bad writing, because I would have been expecting it. But it got a fair number of good reviews, so I was expecting something more.
Bonus hate one:
About a third of the way through, both the terrible family secret and the identity of the killer were jaw-droppingly obvious. I went along a bit longer wondering if maybe they were just really obvious red herrings but no, no, you really do have to be reading the book upside-down and backwards not to guess its secrets. Which are not that shocking. Lifetime Movie grade stuff. Which is fitting, since the one-dimensional characters are all Lifetime Movie stock.
Bonus hate two:
This author is clearly very self-satisfied with her groundbreaking, daring look at female vulnerability.
Except that it’s not groundbreaking. Or daring. Or new or bold or interesting in any way.
High school girls are mean to each other? I had no idea! Teenage girls bury their emotional pain by cutting themselves, puking up their meals, or partying with sex and drugs? You don’t say! Deep down, not even the popular girls are really happy? Stop the presses!
See above: Lifetime. Grade. Stuff. It’s nothing short of embarassing to watch an author trot out this tired stuff with such a smug psuedo-feminist air.
If you’re considering this book, watch some LMN instead. You’ll get the exact same experience, but you’ll have commercial breaks you can use to regret your decision. And cry. And cut yourself.
