True rating, 3.5
This wasn't bad. Not excellent, either, but there were some legitimately great dialogue exchanges & all of the characters felt relatively believable. I have to commend Rice for going for something really brave & quite difficult to do with the final twist- she didn't totally stick the landing in my humble opinion, but it was definitely a solid attempt. It was also nice to see for me, as someone who hopes to pull off something like it in my own work but had never seen it done in a YA novel. I don't know that everything totally adds up logistically & frankly can't be bothered to go double check the entire book to make certain, so I'll just say that it wasn't a huge issue all things considered.
The dialogue, plot, & pretty much everything else gets sillier the longer the story goes on. Towards the end I was fighting the need to cringe at virtually everything that came out of anyone's mouth. The first half was, again, really solid though- there wasn't any time wasted in establishing each personality in the mix, & the narrative moved right along at a breezy pace. It only hit a wall once the murders started & that's mostly because I had a super hard time believing that a bunch of stressed out teenagers would handle this entire scenario the way that they did. Still, Rice did a good job of keeping the guessing game alive to make up for the plot being iffy. I was worried for a while that things would take a very...er..."dated" turn for the worst with the killer reveal, but thankfully that didn't happen. Granted, the killer's motive in the end was still kinda lame, but it was also grimly believable. The ending felt just a bit sudden to me.
Overall, not the best & not the worst. I will say it's stronger than RL Stine's New Girl, which I blew through last week, albeit not by a huge margin. If you like horror, YA novels, & YA horror novels- specifically those of a 90's vintage- this will pass the time okay. I think I'll actually pick up the sequel if I can find it.
Note: "Christabel" is among the greatest preppy bitch girl names I've ever seen & I'll probably be using it someday down the road. So thank you for that, Bebe, if by some chance you see this.