Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - The Cheerleaders

I'll start by saying that YA mysteries and I don't always get along. The plots always seem pretty generic, and being YA they don't tend to get into weird "what-the-hell" territory all that often. Reading the synopsis of this one really intrigued me, so I thought I was going to enjoy this but...

it was a whole lot of yikes from me.

The plot itself was fine, and I appreciate how Kara Thomas was not afraid to showcase some of the more intense issues that some teens/young adults face, but MAN did it feel yucky at times. I hate when authors add triggering things for "shock-value" or as plot devices and I felt as though Kara did that a LOT. For example important topics were included such as abortion, suicide, bullying, and domestic violence, but I just felt like they weren't handled well. They were just sort of "thrown in" at times and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Another issue I had was some of her word choices - for example, the phrase "real dad" was used on more than on occasion to distinguish between the main character Monica's biological father and stepfather who raised her practically her entire life) and it really irritated me. Just say biological? (I know this is such a minor complaint, but it's a pet peeve what can I say).

Monica was extremely unlikeable, and honestly all of the characters were pretty unmemorable. It was even hard for me to distinguish between the five cheerleaders throughout the novel and their deaths were the main conflict! I don't have much else to say simply because they gave me NOTHING to work with. I said what I said.

Overall this just fell really flat for me, and took me WAY longer to get through than it should've. There are plenty of other YA mystery/thrillers that I would recommend before I recommended this one. I applaud Kara Thomas for including hard-hitting topics in this (and I know that she does this in every book she has published) but I'm just not sure I feel the desire to pick up another.

Content Warnings

rexreads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I found that this book tried to deal with too many things so it didn't give any of them enough attention. The mystery didn't feel particularly compelling, and I didn't particularly like the main character.

Content Warnings

cbuenz's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

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