Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Oh my goodness, I can’t with this book and the main character! The author is so focused on Making a Point that she completely overlooks the actual story. I get that the author was trying to make a point about the publishing world and racism, but it fell so flat and lost all charge because it wasn’t really connected to the characters or a story in an emotional way. It’s all very on-the-nose commentary told through a slew of incompetent mouthpieces (otherwise known as “characters”). Each character is just a tool for delivering a different criticism and thus there is no way to connect to any of the characters. None of the characters have any real depth, especially the MC. The MC is so shallow, pretentious, annoying, cynical, whiny and complains all the time - very one-note. The MC was never developed and stayed a surface level annoying b**** the entire book.
The beginning section of the book started off okay with the messed up friendship and main plot point between the two MCs, but then it nose dived into an encyclopedic entry about the publishing/book writing world and detached from the characters. The main plot point (Athena’s death and Juniper stealing and rewriting Athena’s book) was completely left behind. The whole middle section of the book was just twitter and social media discourse, which I guess was the author trying to be meta. (Apparently it reflects a lot of what the author experienced herself on twitter - which felt like the author just airing her grievances without tying it into the actual plot). It was just incredibly boring and annoying to read. The ending picked back up a bit with some more tension/thriller/what’s-going-to-happen moments, but is very quickly over within the space of one chapter. It is So anticlimactic and underwhelming. I actually guessed the ending from the beginning. The author finally took a break from her own critical commentary, focused on the characters and the story, and caught my attention. But what could have been a good build up to a crazy intense ending, while still getting her point across, instead left me with “that’s it?”. It was like the author had no idea how to end the book. And because I never felt connected to the MC, the ending was so flat. Overall the story was so disjointed and broken up by the author’s need to make her point and her message across that I speed read and sometimes skimmed from chapter 3 to the end. The few scenes of “tension” almost randomly scattered through the book (it was like the author had moments of “oh right, I forgot about the story! I should probably add a scene about that”) are so brief and resolve so quickly and don’t even really make sense.
And the narrator is awful! Her voice is so whiny for the MC and any other character is like nails on a chalkboard. The vocal fry is excruciating. I had the audio playing at high speed to get through it fast.
Graphic: Bullying, Cursing, Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Xenophobia, Grief, Stalking, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, Colonisation, Dysphoria, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Minor: Ableism, Addiction, Biphobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Drug use, Eating disorder, Genocide, Homophobia, Incest, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Slavery, Violence, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Abortion, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Deportation
Additional Content Warnings: choking death (graphic); stolen life, hanging, necrophilia (minor)