Unfortunately I found myself quite disappointed with this novel. It touches on important themes of bullying and how isolating it is, but the combination of gratuitous and sometimes excessive violence by the bullies (including attempted sexual assault!) with the extensive philosophical monologues of 14 year olds caused this book to be an utter miss for me. I also found myself unable to really connect to the characters (partially due to said extensive philosophical monologues), but especially due to the fact that the things that could be interesting about their lives are not explored or explored in such a weird detached way that I just couldn't connect with.
TW for bullying, physical and emotional abuse, violence, homophobia, self harm and suicide and sexual assault.