This book was tough for me to rate because it had all the makings of something great but it fell apart for me. I absolutely loved the first chapter and I was sucked in immediately. However, the remainder of the book seems to rewind and set up what we see in the first chapter so the story I was hooked by was not continued. I thought the horrors that Chris faced were so well written and the difficulty of what to do when you're trying to protect people in a town that hates you and no one believes what you're saying. I already have the second book so I will read it and see if these cons are resolved as this was book was primarily a set up for the trilogy.

Cons:
What I couldn't really work with was the usage of an indigenous indonesian culture to explain why the main antagonist is evil. It ran into the "savage native" stereotypes for me and just felt icky in general. (To my knowledge the author is not part of this ethnic group and I could only find a small amount of info posted on his blog.)

The treatment of queer characters in the book is terrible to say the least. They are all punished by the town for being queer and there is no acknowledgement of such or even importance of their sexuality outside of their suffering.

There is so much focus on these teenage girl's breasts, I rolled my eyes the 3rd, 5th and millionth time they were mentioned. It was basically like people were hypnotized by this child's chest. It was too much.

There were also mentions of incest between the only explicitly stated POC characters ...

Disclaimer: I received a gifted finished copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.