Incredible! I support women's wrongs! Team Amy for life!

Gone Girl has always been one of my favorite films, and reading this book has made me realize what a loyal adaptation the film is. The book is everything the film is, plus a little extra!

I can't believe that this was the book that won the Goodread Choice Award for Mystery & Thriller. There was barely a mystery in the whole novel. The pretense of a mystery stands on the shakey ground of the completely oblivious protagonist and the information that is withheld from the reader (despite the novel being in first person narration). This book was so painfully boring.

Deeply cute and unbearably adorable. Stuffed to the brim with tropes -- unrequited love, friends-to-lovers, fake dating, slow burn. 

The characters suffer from no-one-would-act-like-that-in-real-life syndrome, which I can overlook because it's a romance novel. What I can't overlook is the fact that there are zero stakes after Bree and Nathan get together, which makes for a kind of boring last five chapters. The way the plot wraps up, it kind of reads more like a draft than a polished novel. I still enjoyed it though!

Very unique lore, but the plot got a bit boring in the middle and the ending was very predictable. Still, the concept was really cool. I liked the feminist themes and the sapphic representation.

Really great thriller! I liked the twist.

I thought that it was clever that the murder was initially one of April's pranks.

I really liked the characters of April and Hannah, but Will honestly annoyed me so much.

Solid book, but not as good as the main series

I did not enjoy this book. For the book with the most pages in this series, it covers the least ground and has the least intricate mystery. The quality of a murder mystery hinges upon the quality of it's ending, and the ending of this book was incredibly unsatisfying. I didn't feel like I was reading the unravelling of the mystery, because there weren't really any clues, just wildly out-of-character actions.

Peter is a murderer, not because he has a good reason, but because it turns out he's a sociopath. How could anyone have solved this mystery when it hinges upon knowing things that have never been stated?

Other complaints: It took forever for the mystery investigation to actually begin. The premise of the book is that it's an English manor house mystery and only a few chapters are actually spent in the English manor house. All of the modern-day sideplots felt unnecessary. The Stevie and David breakup had zero weight because Stevie and David spent the entire book avoiding having any kind of emotional connection.

Overall, I'm very surprised at the poor quality of this book, since I adored the previous book in the series, The Box in the Woods. 

OH MY GOD THE ENDING CHANGED MY LIFE!

I love Sarah J. Maas but some of those middle chapters were boring! The beginning and ending were really good though!

The world building is intense, but that intensity allows a lot of books and crannies for the plot to burrow into. It took me three tries to read this book and it was WORTH IT for the last ~200 pages. It was an INCREDIBLE ENDING. Everything was perfect, down to the last minute detail. Micah cornering Bryce in the gallery library. Bryce saving Syrinx. Lehabah’s sacrifice. Bryce killing Micah. Hypaxia setting Hunt free. Hunt killing Sandriel. The fight in Asphodel Meadows. Bryce revealing her Starborn powers and closing the Heart Gate. Hunt sacrificing himself to keep Bryce alive. Bryce making the Drop. The love between Bryce and Danika being what allowed Bryce to make her Ascent. SJM put crack into the ending of this book and I wholeheartedly support that decision.  

I liked how Jude and Carden ended up!