I expected to be disappointed by this book. I hated Shiver, and I couldn't even read more than a few chapters of Linger. But let me be clear: I LOVED this book.

I liked the majority of this story. Lexi was a little boring, but it was easy to put up with her. I really liked Sienna's character, and my favorite moment in the story was the scene between Sienna and Lexi in the cemetery.

It kind of bothers me that everyone on Goodreads is upset about the lack of supernatural mermaid scenes. This book never claimed to be about mermaids. It's about sirens! Completely different thing! I definitely did wish the lore or whatever of sirens had been more fleshed out, but I could deal with it.

Anyway, this was kinda rambly, but I liked this book. Didn't love it, but liked it a fair bit. 3.5 stars.

P.S. THE COVER SUCKS! okaybye

killing him would be easy--he was only six.

Basically, I sped through this book. I started it one night and had finished it by the next. I found the plot interesting, and although the dialogue seemed kind of silly at times, the characters were fine. Not great, but fine. And then I got to the ending, and absolutely HATED it. It just seemed so STUPID to me that there would be such a buildup to some sort of conflict or resolution, and then have it followed up with practically nothing.

I thought back to the rest of the book that I had liked while reading it. And Jesus Christ! This book was ridiculous! Everything that the plot was based on went completely unexplained. There was no explanation of the technology that caused these "Messages", no explanation of how Oscar got his hands on the technology, no explanation of how Oscar even came to know that the messages were occurring, no explanation of why he opened up his escapee business or how that got started, no explanation of why he would need money in "offshore accounts" if he was just going to live in this controlled town, no explanation of why his mom didn't take him with her when she left, no explanation of why his seemingly sweet mother married his psychopathic dad in the first place, no explanation of how this whole creepy and "Stepford"-esque town was created or how it got publicity and buyers without alarming authorities, etc, etc, etc. No explanations. Ever.

And the characters were dumb too. Oscar was mean, selfish, and incredibly conceited. Nia was somewhat confusing, possibly bipolar, and rebellious for basically no reason. I feel like with the majority of the other characters we only got small snippets of their actual personalities. I thought Mandi would have been incredibly interesting if there had been a bit more character development. And then there was also that fat momma's boy who was idiotic and annoying and I can't even remember his name even though I finished this book literally three hours ago because he was so terrible and unmemorable.

The dialogue was almost unbearable at times, and the romance was hugely inconsistent, with Oscar thinking about Nia as just a "hot girl" some of the time and as his true love who he would do anything for the rest of the time.

So my reaction while reading was one of "this is okay, I'm interested enough that I'll keep going," but once I got to the awful ending I realized the absolute idiocy and ridiculousness that is Candor.