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jesus this book is so brutal

I know this is thriller first and foremost but the initial college setting and the vibe are actually really cosy to listen to? makes me want to rewatch gossip girl for some inexplicable reason

Have never guessed the whodunnit part so earlier in a thriller book lol it didn’t ruin the fun of the ride though. This is typical Shari Lapena book with enjoyable and forgettable storyline.

Way more YA vibe than expected. I knew this was a teen thriller but expected more of a typical thriller vibe from the cover and storyline. There is some suspense but not to the point where I'd call it a thriller, and the cutesy 'look how witty I am' sort of YA voice sets the entire tone for the book. It's entertaining, just not what I expected.

takes about 20% before the suspense really takes off (quite late for a contemporary thriller, i find) but afterwards it’s a fire

Merritt actually has way more qualities than the other two that could endear her to me but god she is such a self-righteous know-it-all

being pleasantly reminded how much i miss out by prioritising non fictions and not reading enough literary fiction

i know this is not the point but hellstock19 sounds amazing

oh wow there’s so much more graphically depicted gore than i can take 🥹

i had no idea that the ‘double’ mentioned in the book’s blurb was naomi wolf of all naomis and that today that naomi, once an iconic feminist thinker, is most known for her conspiracy theories. it’s just that i don’t particularly get shocked or disappointed by the sort of twist like i used to? i’d say ‘oh’ and move on - such gradual metamorphosis seems like a natural course for humans at this point

the author’s sardonism is everything

the Andrew Sullivan interview excerpts from 1998 omg... now I have to read tons of good stuff that talk about the due accountability and respect for other human beings to get over the absurdity of that interview and dilute the mental distress it caused in me

I like that the ‘things inevitably change / we cannot fool ourselves that we’ll forever stay the same / we need to accept that life comes with different phases and we should know when to move onto the next one’ theme is more seriously and realistically tackled in this book than, for example, christina lauren’s in a holidaze. it’s such an important theme and yet i see it not often enough in novels i think

One thing I didn't expect from this book is how the sense of not belonging, of being marked as different, is so well described? Here it's mainly about the protagonist's socioeconomic background being vastly different from those with whom she ended up with and how she is acutely aware of her not fitting into this world she found herself in, but the way it is articulated can be expanded to encompass much more than that

getting a very strong feeling that this will be the best / most influential book i read this year. can’t believe i worried this book might be ‘too old to be relevant’ to current sociopolitics lol it’s fkn relevant

reading this book is like continuing to think 'I have no idea what I'm reading' while not being able to put it down until you have to