I liked this, but also felt frustrated with it sometimes. 

 

Energy: Tense. Destructive. Hopeless. 

Scene: 🇺🇸 Sierton Wisconsin.

Perspective: We mainly follow two characters. One is a senior high school student transferring schools after a terrible car accident. The other is a high school student transferring to a new school three-years ago as a self-taught cheerleader trying out for the team.  

 

🐕 Howls: Everything is terrible, sad, cruel, or tragic (it felt a little exhausting). 

🐩 Tail Wags: How the twist snuck up on me. Capturing teen angst and anxieties without being disrespectful or minimalizing. 

 

🤔 Random Thoughts:

I didn’t like choice of present tense for this. It made it read both too cold and too melodramatic for me. I think because it felt more like someone describing a screenplay in a tell-not-show style. Like directing characters where to appear and how to ‘feel’. 

 

Sometimes characters had their own voice, but other times it read super grammatically correct in a way no one, especially high schoolers, would speak with their friends.

 

There is a quote in this one that felt important: “…everything that adults, with experience and hindsight, recognize as trivial can seem insurmountable to a teen. Like the end of the world.” I wish more people remembered that instead of holding it over younger people. 

 

Check content warnings. It’s a tough read and for a bit can make you so angry that this stuff happens to people. Hang in there if you are just angry on a conceptual level though. Maybe nope out if you’re struggling with it for real.  

 

At first, I thought this was going to be a bit boring…then suspense started up…then it got out of hand. It didn’t feel cheesy or contrived, I haven’t had a Twist sneak up on me like that in a long time!

 

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🤓 Reader Role: Deep in a character’s mind, sleuthing alongside them. Then ghost from afar getting snippets of a seemingly unrelated story. 

🗺️ World-Building: Enough detail provided to let your imagination run with it and not get squashed later. 

🔥 Fuel: How will our main character navigate their new school? Is she okay? How do her circumstances and new friends connect to a past perspective? What happened to that student in the past?

📖 Cred: Plausible with a touch of over-the-top

 

 

Content Heads-Up: Murder. Lesbophobia (brief). Bullying (pressuring, rejection, ghosting, body shaming, online). Narcisssism. Car accident, injury. Suicide attempt, suicidal ideation, suicide (descriptive, on page). Permanent brain injury. Fatphobia. Eating disorder (purging, binge eating, restricting). Drunk driving. Alcohol, intoxication, partying. Delusions, hallucination. Psychosis. Schizophrenia. Sex with a minor (brief, on page). Arson.

 

Rep: White, Latina, Biracial (Caucasian-Asian, Black-Chinese) Americans. Autism. Childfree by choice. 

 

📚 Format: Library Digital