Okay, I was really excited because the premise of this book - being interactive with the reader as the detective - seemed really cool. However I do not personally feel it delivered on that super well. Aside from the part where you fill out a form with your “professional recommendation” for who to arrest, it mostly wasn’t all that interactive. There were notes from another officer to the reader scattered throughout the book, and I get that they were supposed to draw you in, but they were actually pretty confusing. Even the “helpful tips” actually made me doubt my conclusion (which ended up being correct, but I waffled quite a bit because of the odd way the tips were written).

The main character and the principal narrator of the book, Jane, is absolutely insufferable. She’s incredibly paranoid of everyone around her for no good reason, to the point that I was CONSTANTLY frustrated and kept having to set the book aside and come back to it later. I know that having the POV character pick up on odd things/something being off about a situation is a tactic that is used often to set the eerie mood in mystery books, but in this case it felt so incredibly forced almost every time it happened. I wasn’t thinking “ooo spooky I wonder what that’s about”; I was thinking “girl wtf do you mean, that’s not odd at all”.

Additionally, there were certain details of the book that didn’t make any sense even after supposedly getting all the answers. I was hoping

Jane would turn out to be an unreliable narrator, because a lot of the things she says don’t line up,

but even after finding out that that was true, a lot of things STILL don’t make sense. It felt more like the author kept losing track of her timelines than anything else.

Overall, I think this book could’ve used some structural edits, but otherwise was mostly a fun time. To be honest I probably would’ve rated it above 3⭐️ if Jane wasn’t the worst person ever.

Content Warnings

The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad

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emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

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

4.25

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang

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4.25

This book wasn’t what I was expecting, and I can’t believe this is a debut novel. Huang handles the multiple timelines well enough that I didn’t get confused (which happens often to me). I like how blatantly sexual it is, since a lot of authors seem to sort of tiptoe around the subject of sex if it is not between a man and a woman.

The Night and Its Moon by Piper C.J.

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 56%.

This book sucked. Like, so bad. Painfully bad. Oh-my-god-kill-me-now bad.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

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emotional inspiring mysterious reflective fast-paced