Sooo...I was bored.

To clarify, I enjoyed the first part of this book, up until the point of the incident that landed our protagonist, Oliver, in prison. I can't say I 'liked' the characters, as all of them are highly pretentious and unlikable. But I was enjoying their friend-group dynamic and the setting of a dramatic arts college. But as the book continued, I found myself caring less and less about the characters and what was happening. It all felt pretty unnecessary. There were passages that felt very repetitive and the reveal of what was really going on wasn't surprising in the slightest. I also didn't buy the reason Oliver did what he did. I don't feel like I ever bought into any of the romantic relationships. I liked them as a group of friends and classmates, but none of the love stories did anything for me.

I know that there are many people out there who love this book and that's great. I wish I was one of them. I think my biggest problem is that I didn't know what this book was going to be. I knew that it was about a young man who was in prison for a serious crime and we're going to learn what actually happened. So I was thinking it would be more of a mystery/thriller/suspense. But really, this is a coming-of-age story disguised as a mystery. Because if you're paying any sort of attention, you can guess what the answer to the mystery is going to be without exercising much brain power. And as a coming-of-age drama, I think this book is just okay.

I appreciate the author was trying to do something interesting with the insertion of Shakespearean quotes into the dialogue, and even she admits that it's a very pretentious way for her characters to speak. But that doesn't actually make me like that. I'm not saying it isn't realistic to the way a bunch of early 20-somethings in drama college would speak. After all, my friends and family and I speak in movie quotes all of the time. But it didn't make it any more palatable.

I'm not saying I would never read another book by this author, because I think that she has talent. I just didn't enjoy this story.

P.S.
The author uses the word 'spliff' when she is talking about the characters smoking marijuana. I'd heard this term before, but it is not a word that I think I've ever heard someone actually use in conversation when speaking about marijuana. Joint? Yes. Blunt? Sure. Spliff? Nope. So I go and look up the origin, and sure enough, it's a word that originates primarily from Jamaica and has spread to many Western European countries. Why do authors set their books in the US and then use terminology that is primarily used in the UK and Europe? It doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, I'm nitpicking. No, I don't care.