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A review by pekoparty
Teen Killers Club by Lily Sparks
2.0
(Listened on audio via Libro.fm)
Edit: I want to add, in hindsight, that the entire premise of this book with many of it's details feels like an offensive over-reach by the White-cis-straight experience. Prison glorification? Check. Queer characters as pawns? Check. Brown/Black characters as support, yet underdeveloped and present only for points? Check. Murder porn? Check. Straight love triangle with a woman in the middle? Check. Seemingly unresearched themes of satanism/paganism/cult without clarification? Check.
Original review:
The short of it is that nothing happens in this book, really, until around 75% in. Even what happens is so highly uneventful. It's a extremely predictable YA novel with the usual romantic developments. It really lacked a real level of fkd-uped-ness I think YA readers can actually handle when it comes to horror (Side Note: by the way, Mark Oshiro did a delightful job handling violent language/imagery in Each of Us a Desert). I think that the author tried to add some level of diversity with characters like Jada and Javier, but fell super short with a White gaze. It felt like brownie points. There was a mystery aspect that seemed promising, but in the end there felt like a lot of details were overlooked or flawed and it didn't catch the way I wanted it to. There was also no build for the answer of who killed Signal's best friend. I mean, sure there were hundreds of pages of some stuff, but when it happens it almost doesn't make sense and they just drop this whole big news on you like you're supposed to feel shocked—I was not.
Signal is a very pitiful lead and even the last few pages don't give me hope for the follow up book, since the writing implies there will likely be one. If I can read it for free I will likely just to see what happens. I'm not usually so negative when it comes to a book, but I literally found myself yelling "ew" at the uncomfortable kissing parts that felt just not like kissing at all.
Edit: I want to add, in hindsight, that the entire premise of this book with many of it's details feels like an offensive over-reach by the White-cis-straight experience. Prison glorification? Check. Queer characters as pawns? Check. Brown/Black characters as support, yet underdeveloped and present only for points? Check. Murder porn? Check. Straight love triangle with a woman in the middle? Check. Seemingly unresearched themes of satanism/paganism/cult without clarification? Check.
Original review:
The short of it is that nothing happens in this book, really, until around 75% in. Even what happens is so highly uneventful. It's a extremely predictable YA novel with the usual romantic developments. It really lacked a real level of fkd-uped-ness I think YA readers can actually handle when it comes to horror (Side Note: by the way, Mark Oshiro did a delightful job handling violent language/imagery in Each of Us a Desert). I think that the author tried to add some level of diversity with characters like Jada and Javier, but fell super short with a White gaze. It felt like brownie points. There was a mystery aspect that seemed promising, but in the end there felt like a lot of details were overlooked or flawed and it didn't catch the way I wanted it to. There was also no build for the answer of who killed Signal's best friend. I mean, sure there were hundreds of pages of some stuff, but when it happens it almost doesn't make sense and they just drop this whole big news on you like you're supposed to feel shocked—I was not.
Signal is a very pitiful lead and even the last few pages don't give me hope for the follow up book, since the writing implies there will likely be one. If I can read it for free I will likely just to see what happens. I'm not usually so negative when it comes to a book, but I literally found myself yelling "ew" at the uncomfortable kissing parts that felt just not like kissing at all.