content warnings: suicide, gore, homophobia, age gap relationship (15 year old with adult of unspecified age)
representation: sapphic main character


This was garbage. I don't have any other way to describe it. I'm currently halfway through the TV show this is based on (a fantastic show that I recommend you should watch regardless of your feelings on this) so I figured I would check it out and... wow. I saw the average rating on Goodreads before reading and was shocked at how low it is but now I would contest that it's too high.

This follows fifteen year-old Sydney, an average teenage girl with lots of problems: her dad semi-recently killed himself, she's in love with her (female) best friend, and she has telekinetic powers. A somewhat generic premise at this point but one that can still be written well (see: the TV show).

I haven't read anything else Charles Forsman has written, and this didn't exactly make me want to rectify that.

1. I've read so many books written by men with female main characters that were incredible. This isn't one of them. It's painfully obvious from page one that Charles Forsman is a dude in his thirties trying to write like a teenage girl, and I mean that in the worst way possible. There's this thing that male writers do when badly writing women, especially young women, that often comes across as fetishistic and makes it obvious that everything they know about writing women has come from other male writers.

2. Sydney may as well not have powers. Aside from the shocking ending, they serve no plot function and don't even make for a decent metaphor because they're inserted so infrequently. This is one of the many things the show does far better. Sydney's powers are a constant in the show, and a lot of the plot is about her failing to keep them in check.

3. There's literally no plot. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but if you're going to have no plot then you have to create investment in the characters, something this absolutely does not do. Sydney is painfully generic and often extremely unlikable, and no other character features long enough for you to latch onto. Having no plot is also no excuse for having such fucking terrible pacing.

4. I'm not going to go into it too much but the portrayal of suicide in this was so unbelievably shitty.

5. Without spoilers, the ending is absolute trash. It's only there to shock you and create some forced symmetry with something that happened earlier. As I said, I still haven't finished the TV show but god I hope they change the ending because otherwise... woof.

This was just so terrible. Don't read this, just go ahead and watch the show if the premise intrigues you, I promise you'll have a better time.