It was enjoyable. But Makani’s secret was incredibly disappointing given the weight put on it throughout the entire book. The killer was also boring, played no part in the story other than as the killer so I felt nothing when it was revealed, and his motive was stupid at best. The ending was disappointing. A decent read hence the 2 stars and not 0 or 1 (but only *just* entering 2) but an even bigger disappointment. I read at the end that this is the result of 6 years of research.

… what research?

3.5. No spoilers from me. :)

Hey, for a YA Contemporary with romance (with the occasional blood) this was a good book. For a YA horror/slasher... not so much.

This review will be chaotic, but dear Lord, I want to write a review right now. While I still very much pissed, while I am still so very much disappointed.

This was one of my MOST anticipated reads of this year. Really, when I heard that one of my most liked authors would be writing something totally different I just wanted to squee in happiness. I couldn't wait to see how Stephanie Perkins would write Slasher/Horror books. I was curious, I wanted to know more.

But sadly, after a fantastic, creepy, OMG WHAT THE HELL, opening.. the rest of the book frankly just was boring and bland.

But hey, as I said, for a YA romance it was good. I just adored Ollie and Makani together. They are a cute couple, and I was rooting for them. And of course hoping it wouldn't be Ollie who was the murderer. I loved how sweet Ollie was towards Makani, how caring he was. How he was there for her when she needed him.

It also didn't help that we knew who the murderer was around midway. Yep. That sure killed even more of my happiness. I don't want to know the murderer until the end.

The secret, the BIG GIANT secret that is so often hinted at that eventually I just was bored by it and how Makani never ever told anyone. We learn all about it around page 194, and it was so anticlimatic and so lame that I couldn't even care. Plus I found it all so highly bullshit.

Spoiler

So she cut off her best friend's hair after a gruelling initiation. Her best friend almost drowned. But apparently NO ONE gave a shit about that or the whole initiation and what happened there. Oh no. Apparently all they cared about was Makani who had the word Bitch on her head and the knife in her hand. Whut the actual hell is wrong with the world that someone get arrested, suspended, death threats and other things over something as cut hair. Why didn't anyone care how this all came to be? Why didn't anyone care to punish those seniors?

The murders? I expected people to drop left and right, but instead the murders didn't happen that much, between the first and the second is 70 pages, between the second and the third are 50 pages. Between that? A little bit of fear, but yep, mostly romance. Whoop whoop.

After learning Makani's secret I still had about 80 pages left, and those pages were the lowest. I just had to struggle so hard to get through the book. Plus with the murderer know.... it wasn't even that scary any more, it was more a question of when would he hit again and if he would stay with his pattern or if he would just randomly go for things as cornered people would often do.

Plus

Spoiler

Who the hell leaves their teenage daughter ALONE with their siblings when there is a murderer walking around town? I just found that so unbelievably stupid. Take those kids with you or just stay home. Really, this just stood out so much and I was face palming.

And oh yeah, sure, if you just bundled those murders and the parts together where the kids were terrified and trying to figure out what was going, it would have been a good book and true to the advertising/blurb. But now it just focused too much on the romance, too much on Ollie and Makani, too much on that secret. Well, I guess if you only took those scary/creepy/murder parts you wouldn't hold much of a book. Maybe about 80-100 pages max. And high number is mostly because the last 60-ish pages were mainly about the murders. Yes, about 35% of this book. Also I really don't have anything against romance, but if the book is promoted, advertised and made to seem as a horror/slasher, it shouldn't be the focus. It shouldn't be the main point.

So yeah, those last 60 (well ish) pages were OK, so bumping up my rating by 1, but the ending (well that last page) just plainly sucked. That is how it all ends? And I am dropping my rate by 0.5 stars. In the end I am rating this book 2 stars.

Very disappointed in this one. So very disappointed. :( *sighs*

I may have missed some things, but as I said at the beginning I am still quite urgghhh about things, my head isn't clear. But I think I got the main point across. I am not sure if I would recommend this book, though I would warn people who come here expecting a lot of gruesome stuff. There is some, but it is here and there, and then there is the last 60-ish pages.

Review first posted at https://twirlingbookprincess.com/

This one was all over the place in a really good way!!!

It kept turning and for once I had no clue who the killer was!!!

(Audiobook)

This was bad.

It was completely unoriginal, uninspired, and just boring. There were too many elements that directly copied the movie Scream that it felt a little cheap. I didn't care about any of the characters, and there was way too much emphasis put on the romance. Everyone and everything kind of blended together into a sad lump.

If you want a recommendation for a good slasher novel, check out [b:Final Girls|32796253|Final Girls|Riley Sager|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1496658340l/32796253._SY75_.jpg|50669966] by Riger Sager.

The problem with this novel is the way that suspense was built. Or rather the way in which it wasn't built. Throughrout the story, we learn about a serial killer who brutally murders students from the highschool to which our protagonists go. And if I say brutally, I mean brutally.
Every now and then the perspective from Makani switches to another student and we know that at the end of the chapter, this person will end up dead.

I liked the concept of that, because everytime the perspective changes, you're instantly scared. It would've been better if the characters who died during those scenes were characters we actually cared about though. It would've been much more of a suprise and much more suspenseful if characters from the main cast were killed or targeted.

And yes, I know that in the middle, Makani and Ollie get attacked by the murderer and I actually found that pretty terrifying but all of the other characters were really unimportant to me since we didn't really learn much about them.

Apart from that, I feel like most of the suspense was built on the brutal and bloody murders. Blood doesn't equal suspense. I felt like a lot of the time I wasn't scared but rather disgusted.

Now, my biggest problem with this book was how we found out about the murderer. In the middle of the book. We don't get many suprises from then on and it takes out so much of the novel's suspense. On top of that it's a character that we heard of in one scene, in which he didn't even play a huge role. He probably has less lines in the whole novel than most of the minor characters that were included. After we found out about him, I thought that maybe this was only meant to be a distraction and we'd get a huge plot twist in the end. Nope.

The only suspenseful question that was left to answer was why he killed those random people. And the answer to that was extremly disappointing. Turns out he's a psycho (suprise) and that his motive was that people would'nt leave town because he was jeaulous. I felt like if this motive was at least explained a little more, it could've been better, but we literally find out about it on the last page or something.

So all in all there wasn't much that made the book interesting, the characters were plain, and the suspense was just bizarre.

4

Deliciously eerie and graphic in the way slashers often are. Made me fear for everyone’s life cause I never knew who was gonna die next. A good read for Halloween season.