When I started reading this book I'd forgotten the premise and just kind of jumped in. I assumed from the title that it wasn't going to be a super fluffy YA contemporary, which it isn't, for the most part.
For quite a while I thought that this was going to be a solid four-star book. Unfortunately, it fell off for me by the end.

What I liked:

1. The premise. I don't know why, but I enjoy books where characters are stranded, but not in a life-threatening way. Airports, libraries, schools...it is a weird little pet love of mine in books. I was excited when I realized that's the book I'd stumbled into.

2. The portrayal of grief and survivor's guilt (in the first half). Everyone grieves loss in different ways, and this book is just one example of one person's journey through grief. Ryn's actions in the first half of the book felt authentic.

3. The flashbacks. I liked that this book didn't fall into the annoying trope (although that's not quite the right term) of vaguely alluding to some past horrific trauma but not actually clarifying it for the reader until the end of the book. We know from the very beginning that she is grieving her best friend's horrific death. We know how she died and that Ryn feels guilty because she would've normally been with her. I appreciated that.

What I didn't like:

1. Lack of focus. As the book went on, I felt like it lost focus and the pacing really suffered. I would've enjoyed the book far more if it had just been Ryn and Xander becoming friends on this one night stuck in an airport. But then we get all of these side characters who were really one-dimensional (Siri was really obnoxious) and subplots that seem to go against all of the things we've been told and shown about Ryn in the first half of the book. Taking time to go on a conspiracy hunt with a young genius and attend a rager really messed with the pacing for me, and I felt like the second half dragged. Introducing all of these tangential subplots made it difficult to invest in Xander and Ryn's relationship as well.

2. Lackluster side characters. Siri was awful. I'm not someone who absolutely has to have their phone on them at all times, but when she stole Ryn's phone and wouldn't give it back, I found myself really angry for Ryn, because I knew that she used her phone as a coping mechanism when she had anxiety. Nothing she did after that made me like her at all, and I feel like we were supposed to like her, so that is a problem. Jimmy was the token gay character, which seriously just felt like it was thrown in so the author could check the sexual diversity box. Oh, I think Siri was also an ethnically diverse character. There is some off-hand comment about her parents being in an arranged marriage, but that is about all we get, so I guess she's also a diversity box checked. Troy was kind of interesting and quirky, but I didn't really feel like we got to know him very well and the scenes where he and Ryn go searching for evidence of a conspiracy in the Denver airport is more than a little silly. Mostly, these characters and the subplots they were a part of felt unnecessary.

3. Lottie and Ryn's relationship. Ryn is grieving the loss of her best friend. Through flashbacks we see their 'friendship' and I have to say, it made me very uncomfortable to read. Lottie was a liar and a manipulator. She pressured Ryn endlessly, and Ryn never stood up for herself and said no. It was really frustrating to read about. There is actually one part with Xander where he wants her to 'surf' on the airport trains and she puts up this huge fight about it and says that she follows the rules and never let anyone including Lottie tell her what to do. Then we proceed to get countless flashbacks of Lottie lying to or manipulating Ryn to do whatever reckless or downright dangerous thing she wants. It felt like a huge discrepancy.

Now, I'm not saying that this couldn't have been a powerful story. Emotions are complex, and you can still love and miss someone and still acknowledge the fact that the relationship you were in wasn't healthy. But that isn't where this book goes. Never once does she challenge her relationship with Lottie, either in the flashbacks or in the present day. She sees that her friend was wild, but it seemed obvious to me as the reader that there was something really dark going on with Lottie, and that was never addressed or explained. We see that she is a lying user, but Ryn never does. And I get that grief can sometimes cause a person to put on rose-colored glasses, but I feel like Ryn's arc would've been more powerful if she could've recognized that even though she loved her friend and misses her dearly, she wasn't as good a friend as she should've been to Ryn.

This is another thing I think really suffers because of all the extraneous subplots. I wanted more introspection, more dissection of Ryn's feelings and her coming to an understanding about herself, but we didn't get that. At least, I wasn't satisfied with the way we got it.

The romance. This isn't really 'insta-love' in my opinion. These characters aren't promising to love and cherish each other for ever and ever by the end of this book which takes place over the course of about 12 hours. They feel an attraction to each other and even kiss at the end, but on the whole their relationship felt more like a friendship. And I wish it would've just been a friendship with maybe a hint that if they met again something could grow from it. That would've been far more powerful to me I think. Also, they spend a huge chunk of this book apart or dealing with other people, so the idea that they would get to the point of being kissy-face with one another felt a little unrealistic.

The worst part is that this book starts to veer into the love-conquers-all trope. At the beginning of this book, Ryn can barely function without her phone, which she uses obsessively to ask whatever questions pop in her mind to google. By the second half of the book, she's running around the airport without it because it was taken from her -- and she's perfectly fine. And then by the end she's said goodbye to the Lottie in her head and everything is looking up. She's realized that she can't lie to her parents or her therapist and we're supposed to leave the book with a sense of hopefulness...I just felt doubtful.

Other odds and ends:

1. As much as I felt sorry for Ryn, I found it really difficult to connect with her. Not only was she very closed off with all of the people around her, but she was very closed off in her own inner monologue. It made it difficult for me as a reader to like and root for her.

2. I felt like there was a darker story about Lottie regarding her father that felt like it was just dropped. I don't know if the author intended it, but I felt really disturbed reading the passages where the girls would talk about Lottie's father and when they followed him to the airport. Later, after Lottie has binged on the little bottles of booze, she starts ranting about someone being a disgusting cheater and asshole and Ryn thinks she's talking about her latest hookup, but then some of the things Lottie says don't apply to him and Ryn is confused. They do, however, apply to her father. It makes the airport chase look more like a jealous girlfriend rather than an angry daughter. I also felt like Lottie's rebellion with drugs, sex, x-rated movies, shoplifting, etc. don't seem like an organic reaction to learning one of your parents is cheating. It just seems really extreme, but again, it's never really addressed. Again, I don't know if that was the intention, because it's never actually explored, but I just felt really uncomfortable reading those scenes.

As much as it seems like I'm railing on this book, there were some good moments that I enjoyed. I just felt like it didn't live up to its potential.