This book surprised me, both in how much I enjoyed it and the ending. It's been a long time since I was truly surprised by an ending in a thriller, and this one got me good. It outsmarted me and I was fascinated along the way. I especially enjoyed how "Julie's" history was told backward while the rest of story unfolded linearly. It made a nice parallel throughout. By the end of the novel I cared about these characters. This was a solid four star read for me, and while I probably won't return to it, I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys mystery/thrillers.

I have mixed feelings on this. For one, there was so much going on that it was distracting from the story. Four main characters, each of them dealing with a host of things that sometimes related to the shooting and sometimes didn't. I was hoping it would be more nuanced. It felt like it tried to delve deeper into what causes mass shootings and came up with "evil" and "abusive parents." It was a bit of a shallow way to deal with difficult issues, which left it feeling melodramatic. There simply wasn't enough time to go in depth with everything brought up in the book.

But it kept me on the edge of my seat until I was finished with good suspense and I did enjoy Nijkamp's writing style, although it could have benefited from longer sections.

I wanted to like this, but I struggled getting into it, and when I finally did, the only character I actually liked was Wade. Theo, Griffin, and Jackson weren't the kind of people I like to hang out with so reading about them and their love lives got tedious. The writing style also wasn't to my tastes. I think most of my issues with this book stemmed from personal preference, rather than flaws in the writing/story. It didn't make me want to check out anything else by Silvera.

It wasn't terrible, but in all honesty it took about halfway through for me to care at all about any of the characters. And even then, there were a couple of different plot lines going on that seemed distracting from each other. It seemed like Megan Miranda missed the mark on a few cool ideas, like secrets being the currency of Monroe. There weren't many secrets, and they definitely weren't traded like currency. It was just one guy blackmailing people over things that seemed too small for what they were doing.

I think I would have preferred the book the summary described (it wasn't accurate at all), but even then it was okay. Megan Miranda did a good job in wrapping up all the loose ends in a satisfying way. This isn't the best psychological thriller I've read, but it did hold my attention until the end.

I didn't particularly like this book. It was less than 250 pages and wound up taking me several days to read, when I usually read books that short in an afternoon. I couldn't get into it, and even halfway through I couldn't get into the characters or the story. I usually like more artsy, experimental writing styles, but I didn't enjoy it here as much as I tried.

I don't particularly like books that are structured around one big secret. To me it always feels like a cheap way of holding my interest and I get tempted to skip to the end instead of reading the whole thing. If you're someone who doesn't mind that, you might like this book better.

It earned three stars because the ending made me emotional. I didn't like the ending (without getting into spoilers, it's something I've seen a number of times before and never enjoy), but it made me emotional and some of the writing at the end was beautiful. That was enough to push it into a positive rating for me. I definitely see how people can be split on this book.

I don't really get the hype for this book. Everyone seems to love it so much or talk about its important message, but I didn't see it. It mostly just seemed like typical YA that got bogged down in the romance and forgot about the legitimately more important things going on. I thoroughly enjoy romance, but the protagonist was literally committing murder and I wanted the focus to be on that. Her emotions, her reasoning. How she was dealing. But instead all we got was how it affected her relationship with her boyfriend.

And then we followed Jack around and I couldn't figure out why he needed to be a POV character at all? And Peekay too, though she at least was a little more compelling.

I just don't know about this book at all. It was weird, the characters and their emotions and the way it dealt with murder and their relationships and lack of any discernible plot. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the kind of book that struck me as good by any means.

I was so excited to read this because I had heard such good things about it over the past year, but it just didn't do much for me. It dealt with rape sensitively. It showed the importance of a support system and how things can go right. It was all a little too perfect and neatly wrapped up, but that I could have dealt with.

But I couldn't get into the characters at all. The only thing that kept me reading the book was the mystery of who did it, which wasn't what the book was about at all. I just felt like I was being told what the characters felt instead of experiencing it. Some of the ways she described emotion were lovely, but it didn't feel true. The characters all ran together for me.

I really wanted to like this book, but the only thing that kept me going through the end was wondering who did it.

It was cute, fluffy, generic, and utterly predictable. SN was so obvious my only doubts to his identity was that it was so obvious he must be a red herring. And honestly, I probably would have given this book three stars as yet another forgettable YA contemporary romance.

Except it made me laugh. Repeatedly. Out loud. I don't tend to laugh at books and I genuinely can't remember the last one that made me do more than snicker, but this one did, so I felt it deserved that fourth star. There wasn't much other than that to make it stand out.

This is an important book. Trans author, trans protagonist, trans model on the cover. Even if this book wasn't good, it would still be an important book.

That being said, I did enjoy this. The author glossed over and improved a lot of aspects of Amanda's life (like her access to surgery/hormones, passing, etc), but I got the vibe it was very much intended to be a hopeful "it gets better" story, than a hard hitting description of what it's like to be trans. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as you don't hide your intentions. Hopeful books are so important. Amanda, the protagonist, was a strong fully developed character who drove the story forward and I was fully invested in her more than any other aspect.

There were a few writing elements were weak. A lot of the side characters seemed one dimensional and the romance was a little short on chemistry. It was quite clear that this was a debut novel, but I would be very interested in seeing what Meredith Russo writes in the future.

The afterword made me cry.

There were aspects of this book I liked, like the details about her feelings at the beginning and the way Cody coped with her grief by being annoyed about the little things because that was more manageable. But the things I enjoyed were overshadowed by the things I didn't. I hate when stories told in the aftermath of a suicide have a "villain." I also disliked the portrayal of suicide and how Meg's suicide seemed to be compared to weakness while Cody's survival was strength. The one line from Cody's mother about Meg hanging herself with jewels was particularly gross.

The penultimate chapter made me tear up a bit, but the final chapter just made me angry and I ended the book with a sour taste in my mouth. I wouldn't recommend this.