Fourth Wing but instead of a war college and dragons, Shield of Sparrows has 200 pages of road trip, the Endor tree village, 200 more pages of road trip, and magical rabies. 

I ate up the first ten chapters and devoured the last ten chapters because the plot PLOTS at the beginning and end of the book. Unfortunately the plot goes missing during the middle, because despite all of her questions and all of her scheming, Odessa does not have much impact on the story during the middle of the book.

To the credit of the book, I will say that the middle of the book has a really juicy interpersonal conflict that kept me locked in (

Odessa believing that she is married the Zavier but falling for the Guardian

). I did LOVE the drama, I cannot lie. I really liked the way that Odessa and the Guardian are written. Although the genre of Romantasy is getting oversaturated, Odessa and the Guardian felt very unique. However, all of the other characters felt very surface level and unexplored (

Zavier's death felt like it was trying very hard to mirror Liam's death from Fourth Wing but we never really got to know Zavier, so I didn't have much of an emotional reaction

).

This book was very hard to rate because at the end of the day I really enjoyed reading this book but HOLY FUCK did it have a pacing problem. I’m a little disappointed because I wanted this to be a 5 star read for me.

Fast-paced thriller with a decent number of plot twists, some predictable and some unexpected. Freida McFadden thrillers tend to be a little formulaic, but I don't mind because they usually work for me.

The prose leaves a little to be desired (which was especially noticeable in the audiobook), but I also appreciated the strong writing in the descriptive language used to describe the depth of Blake's disgust as he uncovered the more and more nauseating surprises that Whitney left for him. 

The twist ending felt a little derivative of

Gone Girl

, especially whenever

Whitney/Krista killed Elijah after having sex with him. Very Amy Dunne-coded.

I definitely didn't guess

the twist at the very ending, where Amanda/Whitney was hired to kill Whitney/Krista

. Overall I had a good reading experience!

Captivating thriller with a lot of unexpected twists. The prose was very readable and the plot was fast-paced. I liked the two main characters, Nic and Jenna. The contrast between the two women provided a lot of subtle characterization that let us get to know them just by the differences in how they reacted to their sisters' deaths.  

I predicted one of the earlier twists (

Brad and Kasey's affair

) but I really liked that the author took this subplot in an unexpected direction (

Sandy's involvement

). I was totally blindsighted by the ending (

Kasey is alive and Jules's death was Nic's fault

) and I liked that the author left the ending on the darker side of morally gray. 

Not terribly exciting. The characters were flat. The setting was strange in a fairly unbelievable and uncompelling way. I disliked the ending because it relies on my least favorite mystery thriller trope: when a first-person narrator knows all or part of the big mystery but never shares this in the narration.

Grady knew that he attempted to kill Abby but never shares this in his narration despite constantly wondering about the circumstances of Abby's disappearance.

I think is lazy writing and a way to come up with a thriller without writing a real twist.

An enjoyable thriller with a compelling premise. The middle got a bit slow, but I genuinely liked Camilla as a character and I felt connected with her personal struggles, so I never wanted to put the book down. The ending was a little trite and I guessed one of the main twists right off the bat (that the manuscript was written by Luke)

My main complain is one of personal taste — the writing is extremely British, so having to decode all of the British-isms in the setting really took me out of the plot as an American reader. 

Engaging and fast-paced. I flew through this book and really enjoyed it while I was reading it. However, I think that Wynn-Williams skirts around how much personal responsibility she is willing to take for the damage that Facebook has done, and that lack of personal self-reflection makes the ending fall a bit flat.

Would have been a 4 star (because I really enjoyed it, insane worldbuilding and all) but the ending felt rushed and unsatisfying.