the only "funny and furious" thing here rn is me. bc i am a fool for finishing this book solely so i can add it to my goodreads. and im furious at myself.

bro idek where the hell to start. but as a spoiler, this review will not be nice because i feel like i was catfished

truly is amazing how bella mackie can take the interesting premise of a woman scorned murdering her family after her mom dies, and then churn out this mess. OH LORD i am truly rambling but that;s basically all she did in the book, so i guess it's fine if i ramble too, isn't it?

at first i loved the first person narrative with all of grace's inner monologues and being able to experience her family members from her perspective and her memory. and then suddenly the entire book became 90% internal monologue. which is definitely a writing choice that can go over well! but the issue is that grace is not nearly funny or interesting enough to hold this choice for the whole book. near the end, she churns out paragraphs and paragraphs of internal monologue that adds no value to the story and just reiterates information and characterization that has ... already been reiterated to us 100 times before.

i can easily suspend my disbelief. the fact that grace was able to get away with everything despite having flimsy non existent plans? i can get behind that. but the fact that

Spoiler

it all amounted to literally nothing because of some unspoken half brother who was secretly there all along?

the worst kind of plot twists are those that add no value to the story as a whole and those that serve only to BE a twist at the end of a story. that's literally what this is. oh no but

Spoiler

he was mentioned as that person who asked her for a light and he interacted with her when she killed lee!!!!

that literally doesn't count because those moments of interaction were brief and inconsequential. much like many portions of this book when grace just talks and talks and talks and talks.

i couldn't tell if we as readers were meant to root for grace or pray for her downfall. it's okay to want a character who is morally gray, but also idk me personally - i will not be invested in a character that is just so... not written well? idk how to explain it but like. i love me an anti-hero. i love how her whole scheme revolves around wanting revenge for her mom and partially for herself. but

Spoiler

killing her cousin? being an overall shitty person to her loved ones and genuinely viewing people as nothing more than pawns?

like how am i supposed to root for that. and not even root for it - but just stay interested enough to keep reading and wanting her to win.

another thing - the use of the present timeline truly added nothing to the story other than the twist that

Spoiler

she was in jail for a death she had nothing to do with

which again - a twist in itself is nOT a good twist. i mean i guess the present timeline was needed to include

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kelly and then have that payoff at the end?

but again there's that issue where the twist only serves one aspect of the story and not the story as a whole.

the last 40 pages actually made me want to rip my hair out. i cannot believe i read this whole thing and i am just so upset that this story idea was executed this way