Here's the thing. What Courtney Summers does well is absolutely fantastic. And what she doesn't do well, is kind of passable anyway. And this is her debut, so I expect reading the rest of her backlist will be even better.

I was so invested in Parker. I really liked her. You're not supposed to like her because she's a bitch (her words), but she is so likeable and relatable. I love that you see her as a person throughout her whole life, not just post trauma. Like her intense reaction toward trauma doesn't come out of nowhere and Summers spent so much time on character development. It was fantastic.

I loved Parker's relationship with her exboyfriend Chris. It would have been so easy to fall into stereotypes of the cheerleader captain and her jock boyfriend as the high school power couple, but it didn't at all. They have complicated feelings for each other and it's not always positive, but it feels so real. Their growth throughout the book hit me hard.

In a lesser book, the flaws might've ruined this. Parker keeps passing out at school. Just like randomly fainting in art class or the hallway or whatever, and it happens kind of a lot. It's very melodramatic. There are a lot of moments that just hit kind of wrong. Like I'm not really feeling the moment because it's written in a way that's too over the top. Like she has a scene where she freaks out and it just doesn't feel right. It feels like a put on, and a melodramatic soap opera. And this has irritated me so much in other books, but everything else was so good in this that I almost didn't care at all.

And the whole new boy comes to town and totally falls for ex cheerleader captain who's not popular anymore is kind of tired. I just don't have it in me to care about that kind of story anymore. Summers makes it real so I can get through it, but it's one of those stories that I've just read a million times.

I cried a lot, over like six different things. And it's barely 200 pages long. I love anything Summers writes at this point. She is one of my favorite authors. I probably wouldn't recommend starting with this book because (in my opinion), she's done nothing but improve throughout her career, but it's still a worthwhile read.