Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

Extremely slow paced. Found myself getting frustrated with how frequently the story bounced from character to character. It made it seem choppy and was hard to get the whole picture. Right as new information would come to light it would cut to a new perspective. I found myself having all these questions and very little answers.
The story started to snowball and pick up pace as you realize not one of the Gloss girls really knew anything about the others. All the secrets started coming to light and answers finally started arriving. The ending was very sad but it was satisfactory. The perspective from Cassidy's sister broke my heart, even her family knew next to nothing about her.
I enjoyed the look at the underbelly of fame that this book gave us. The emotions that were written into this book carried very well, the deep sadness and loneliness radiated whenever we were reading from Cassidy's perspective.

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tallycat007's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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cassie7e's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

One star for competent writing, one star for prominent queer rep. If this had been marketed as YA instead of adult, I might have had different expectations.

Maybe I'm just too old for immature teen drama, but I found all the characters offputting and unlikeable. They are terrible to each other and all think they are in the right, or are responsible for all the wrong in the world. I don't think it's unrealistic, especially in how teen girl performers are exploited, but made it very hard for me to root for any of them or really care how their storylines played out.

I also found the "mystery" of Cassidy's depression confusing. It was neither surprising to me that a character in her position would struggle with mental health for years, nor was there ever a conclusive explanation found for her struggles to justify everyone's bizarre interest/confusion about it.

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jackieyvette's review

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dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I read it because I wanted a book that was similar to Daisy Jones & the Six and this one was listed everywhere as something in the same realm. I loved the premise idea, early 2000s pop girl groups are my favorite, but I think this book was just too slow. I felt like it took getting through more than half the book to really get anything of interest. I like Cassidy and Merry’s storylines, but I feel like Rose and Yumi’s fell flat which sucked because I actually really like the idea of Yumi, but Rose was just unlikeable from beginning to end.
I wouldn’t say it’s really anything like DJ&TS other than it being the music industry, but maybe I would have liked it more if I would have found it as a stand alone book and not a similarity between the two.

Crying Score: None, but Cassidy and Merry had me for a minute.

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