As much as I love Alice Feeney's writing and wild plot twists, this one was not a winner for me. I was hooked from the start for sure, and I wanted all the details on everything that was happening, but by the halfway point I was over all the little twists and tiny reveals that were not all that exciting. 

First of all, Edward was obviously a red herring, which is not a problem on its own. He was meant to throw us off the scent of Claire, but he served NO other purpose whatsoever. So why on Earth was there such a graphic rape scene while our main character is in a coma? It served no purpose other than to be gross and hard to read. He had no connection to anyone in the story other than Amber, and served as a tiny bit of filler for Claire's bad behavior. I really think he could've been cut out of the story altogether and it would've been an improvement.

My second biggest complaint is I'm not sure why the choice was made to make a 10/11 year old girl so fatphobic? I know she is a problematic character and obviously has a lot of flaws, but it felt unnecessary that multiple characters, including her mom, were described to be fat and disgusting. I'm also thinking maybe that's a trend in Feeney's writing though, since Madeline was also described to be disgusting and overweight. Overweight/fat characters are not a problem, but maybe we don't need to portray all of them as disgusting, unhealthy, evil people?

 

It's a shame that I didn't like this as much as I'd hoped, because Feeney really knows how to pull you into a mystery. I wanted to know what was going to happen from page 1 and I kept reading because regardless of how I felt about the characters or what was happening, I was still intrigued.