⭐️⭐️ / 2 stars

The Initial Insult is a book about two former best friends. Something happened in the past, a long-standing mystery for Tress and she’s convinces Felicity has the answers.

Honestly it was a really weird book for me. I don’t know what to really think of it, but I know I didn’t really like it. It just confused me.

The story in itself is a bit underwhelming. We have to characters who’ve been dancing around each other for years and Tress wants answers to questions she’s had for years. She decides to attack and scare Felicity into telling the truth, from which we read about multiple flashback throughout the years to see both sides of some events that happened. I struggled to see the relation between all these events and the answer Tress wants to get.

I didn’t really like the characters, Tress and Felicity both seem to have serious mental issues and I really couldn’t connect with them or understand their actions. Also, the party people in the book disgusted me with their actions towards others.

The book is written from three POV’s and I just couldn’t understand the third POV. I didn’t understand it, see the point or added value of the POV. Even without reading those chapters, you wouldn’t miss any major points or information in the story. It just made the story that much weirder.

The book also ended with a huge cliffhanger, which was really annoying. The whole point of the story was for Tress to get the answers she wanted, and while she got some, the main answers and/or topics weren’t even discussed. Because of this, I struggle to understand the point of the book and everything that happened it in. Another main topic was a deadly flu which reminded me of Covid, but as it was mentioned a few times, nothing seemed to be done with it. I recon it’s something that’s set up for the second book.

Overall, the book just didn’t work out for me. It confused me and weirded me out and not in a good way. I’m not sure if I’ll be reading the sequel when it releases.