With the premise of this being a reality show with murder being an unexpected plot point of the season, I was really hoping to enjoy this book more than I did. I will admit to not being the biggest fan of reality television, but I’ve dabbled and found entertainment in it enough that I thought this book would interest me - and I was wrong. I’m unsure if all of the drama felt flat, or that our main characters were the “normal” ones in the cast, making their parts feel more bland than normal, and I seriously considered DNF’ing this book multiple times. 

The first chapter begins with the “shocking” reveal of the murder, and then we backtrack months earlier to get to that point, and I honestly feel like this made the book drag more than was necessary. The entire time I was mentally waiting to just get on with it and didn’t care one iota about the underlying plot. I feel like the reveal of who is murdered kind of ruined the suspense, because the entire time I was both waiting for her to die, and also keeping an eye out on who would kill her. Also, no spoilers, but the murdered character has a past that - quite literally - has nothing to do with the plot. I understand it’s there as a red herring, but when absolutely nothing would have changed had this section been removed I ended the book wondering why I even wasted my time with reading those parts. 

This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but since we start the book knowing who will be murdered - the actual culprit is obvious the entire novel, so nothing - down to how she dies - is really a shock. As well, the romances within this book felt blank and unnecessary, especially considering there is a romance with the character who is murdered - but then, the person she is with immediately gets together with her cousin! And while the book tried to go with the “they trauma-bonded together” angle, it felt extremely off and ended the book with a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall, I felt the pacing of this book to be extremely slow, with a majority of the runtime focused on the non-existent reality television show, and only near the end remembering that there was supposed to be a murder mystery plot. The investigation felt stilted and unrealistic, as well as how they caught the ones responsible for the events of the novel. I never really connected with any of the characters - even those we were clearly supposed to - and I felt bored the majority of this book, with my only thoughts to how unrealistic things were going, or wondering why I even cared about specific events that unfolded. 

Also, this isn’t a real complaint, but we begin the book with our producer - Eden - who is very clearly an aromantic bisexual, and yet her desire to not have any romantic attachments is, by the end of the novel, portrayed as a negative that she had to “change” with therapy. No. She didn’t. The only thing she needed to actually change was how she approached her relationships, and how clear she made her boundaries around romance to those she had relationships with. It left an EXTREMELY bad taste in my mouth to end the book with her in a both romantic and sexual relationship, and to look back on her previous actions as a form of psychopathy she needed intensive therapy to learn from, and to realize that the start of the book was intended to portray this behavior as “odd” and “wrong.” Up until the very end I was expecting her and the other producer she idolized, who also had strong aromantic energy, to enter into a lesbian aromantic relationship. Instead, I get Eden by the end of this novel insulting and thinking the other woman is a heartless freak for not having those emotions that Eden started the novel not having either. This didn’t really have any real impact on the story but it really bothered me, as you can tell by the lengthy paragraph I’ve written about it. I want to be clear, I don’t believe the author intended for it to come across this way, but (at least for me) it very much did.