CW: Anti-lgbtqia sentiments, death of teenager
2.5 Stars

It’s not a psychological thriller.

It's not a dark mystery.

It’s scarier.

It’s a …..*screams in terror*... love triangle.

It just felt like a book about an obsessed creepy stalker girl yearning after her Disney princess best friend who fell for the misunderstood snarky rich girl. Wait. It didn’t feel like that. It WAS that. After looking at the chilling cover I was expecting so much more. The thing that I need to confess is that I could not stop listening to it today. After processing this I’ve realised I was completely drawn into the ‘whodunnit’ aspect of it and I really enjoyed the police interview scenes. There were definitely a few possibilities of who committed the crime and I wasn’t disappointed with the direction the author took. So what Readers really need to do is ignore the cover. Imagine it has a moody looking girl staring at a pretty girl who is looking at a beautiful girl who is staring at the moody girl with a smirk on her face. That I think would be a more appropriate cover by which people could set their expectations to. A weird read for me because it was an unputdownable average book. Odd right? Props for diversity too. ( )

I heard this was a lesbian murder mystery, and so I wanted to read it -- it is that, but it's more about the undercurrents in school life -- who likes who? Who has money? or doesn't? How does skin color or privilege effect what's going on? What about alcohol? Or talent? It was pretty engrossing, and I found the lesbian aspect appealing, but I'm not sure I'd say that I really liked the book -- too contemporary fiction for me. Too high school. All of which are exactly what the book is meant to be. ( )

mixed genre of teen angst/drama with murder mystery, and Lo manages both admirably. I pretty much missed the twist at the end, which was delightful.

This is a hard one to review. I almost would have preferred not having read the epilogue, and I would say don't read the epilogue if you prefer a little mystery in your books.

Overall, aside from the ending, this was such a great read. I honestly wasn't focused on finding out who the killer was at all. The chapters are short and the character dynamics and relationships were intense which kept me engaged the entire way through.

I read this book in one sitting and I think I might check out more by this author!

What's your view on epilogues, do you prefer to know everything or are some things better left unsaid? ( )

teen fiction (LGBTQ interest). I want to like Malinda Lo's books just for diversity's sake (Chinese/lesbians) because there aren't enough out there yet that accurately represent the diversity of our populations, but after reading this (as with her diverse Cinderella story, Ash), I was underwhelmed.

Maybe the cover (which looks terrific) set me up for disappointment, as it really isn't that dark or gory of a story--or really that suspenseful or twisty either. Just mean girls with secrets, but not terribly surprising secrets.
I maybe would've liked to see a collaboration with a graphic artist to tell the parts of Jess' comics--that might have been cool, though the plot overall didn't thrill me much in general.

Parental considerations: contains sex, marijuana, and drinking (and not all that responsibly).

For other books about diverse teens interested in comics/graphic art, maybe try Jen Wilde's Queens of Geek instead. ( )