My first B.A. Paris book and I'm not impressed...I mean it hooked me enough to finish it but it was also just a quick, easy read.

As a protagonist, Alice was underdeveloped; her motivations too flimsy and inconsistent. Nothing about her thoughts and actions throughout the book support her apparent need to be punished. I kept expecting the book to turn into a Woman in the Window kind of situation in which Alice turns out to be an unreliable narrator who also posses vital information no one else does. Nope, turns out she's just very shortsighted and naive. Her inconsistency as a character wasn't an intentional choice by the author, it was just poor writing.

There were lots of eye roll moments in this book but the one that annoyed me the most was at the end when she says she was jealous that Leo got to "atone" for his misdeeds (a real bootlicker fantasy in my opinion). Even people who feel deep trauma or guilt over the harms they've committed don't want go to the hell on earth that is prison. And if Alice really felt that horrible about her past, why didn't she do something else to punish herself when the judge refused to incarcerate her??

There were just so many weird choices and missed opportunities on B.A. Paris's part. Rather than clever or twisty, all the red herrings were badly executed and did little to create true suspense or tension.