This is a Ruth Ware novel with the darkness dialed up and the realism dialed down, maybe a dash of diversity for flavor. It's served warm but quickly cools over a narrative that long outlasts its savor. 

It has merits: the plot, the mystery, the way it resists certain tropes and breaks off the rails to offer something just a little different, just a little less expected and easy. It wrestles with some unexpectedly hard issues, But a third of the way through, it lost-the suspension of my disbelief. Then at the two-thirds mark it just got tiresome and frustrating. I wanted to DNF it, but felt like I needed to honor the -time I'd put in. Maybe it was the lack of urgency, or the heavy-handed deep POV: I plowed through, but it was a SLOG, 

Trigger Warnings: graphic depictions of panic and anxiety, graphic near drownings and depictions of being trapped or suffocating Depiction, not graphic, of suicide, References to non-consensual sexual acts, Graphic descriptions of non-sexual assault References -to brutality and sexual abuse, Themes of group violence and exploitation. Gaslighting