eriniese's reviews
160 reviews

this is one of those books that would benefit from not putting the mcs in a relationship. alice and lottie work much better as friends, they don't seem to have that much romantic chemistry, and especially not enough to

say i love yous one second after getting together

. and that line that goes like,

for a moment, just for a moment, the surge of love outshone the feral hatred in my heart

bjsjkdjkdbjkd MADE ME ROLL MY EYES SOOO HARD. very much giving vibes of lesbians moving in together after the second date, however...

there are some confusing cuts. for example, they're

hiding by a store and suddenly lottie is hurt because of the rubies, and she starts to scream

, but we don't get an elaboration on what happens after that. the chapter ends and we are in the car from alice's pov.  or when

they're in the hospital, and alice says she tore through the veil

, and in the next chapter, we're already in the future with a time skip, missing conversations. it would be better to pick it back up in the next chapter from the other pov? it makes no sense. it's supposed to build suspense but it doesn't because we are missing what feels like very important pieces of a puzzle. it's anticlimactic, and makes the pacing weird. 

however, i really enjoyed the atmosphere of this book. it promised dark academia and it delivered. i found myself relating to alice as well, so that was fun.

i enjoyed it, especially because of the various psychological portraits. i wasn't sure who was to blame and to what extent, and i kept going back and forth between contempt and pity. 

the story was told through different povs, but in majority they were retelling the same story,  so after the third time, it got a bit repetitive. i also don't know if this is the matter of the translation, but the inner thoughts and the perspective of 13 yo children read like thoughts of adults, which felt like a bit of a narrative failure.

however, it was still very interesting and i didn't see the ending coming. 

(also, the way you could forget that these boys even had fathers at all because they were so absent... men are trash always and forever!) 

this book could've been an email. or, at least, over 100 pages shorter.

i really like like the concept of being given access to everyone's email accounts at work because i'm nosy as hell, but. oh my god. i know it's for the plot, but i think everyone knows that you shouldn't use your work email for private shit, especially when you're going to be a cunt towards your coworkers there? these people are all cunts towards one another, and you're telling me they're writing that stuff to each other? leaving written evidence in the WORK channel? ANJDBJKBJGGG ok. suspension of disbelief. i get it. i had no issues with that, really. but "light, heartwarming, laugh-out-loud hilarious"? did i accidentally read a different book? or, is the line I’m so embarrassed my vagina hurts supposed to be hilarious instead of odd and off-putting? seriously, i started wondering what was wrong with the author to make them consider writing that down. this book was depressing and annoying.

i don't even have it in me to trash-talk jolene. if you need 33 years on earth and snooping through people's emails to realize that everyone in your life is struggling more than they let on... girl. she's mean, has no manners, and every time she has a chance to be a nice person, she steers clear of that road. she even treated her 12 yo neighbor like trash despite knowing she had a difficult situation at home, and then

proceeded to become a youth counselor

? on what grounds? after more-or-less a year of therapy? who allowed her. i hope they do a background check on her and she stays jobless forever. her alcoholism has also not been treated with enough seriousness.

the drama is so forced and boring. everything lines up so easily to get us to the climax, which ends up making it underwhelming. jolene's actions are nonsensical, because every time she can fix things, she acts like a weirdo and makes everything worse. she's just stupid. 

even the backstory plot felt unnecessary. it's just some barely mentioned trauma, only brought up to back up her awful behavior and to make her spiral when someone, rightfully, i'd say, calls her a loser or a weirdo. l o l. it's not fleshed-out enough to make the reader care, and it's not well-integrated into the plot, either. it makes no sense that

some teenager spewing bullshit would force her entire family to move out

. she says that after hearing all the rumors,

she even started thinking that maybe she DID something to hurt her friend because she was so gaslighted

but we know that she didn't? because she says it earlier? and the fact that no one at school offered her counseling when

her friend died

makes no sense. even if her parents are conservative like that. 

i don’t remember the last time i read about a character that was so incredibly insufferable and charming at the same time