eajklose's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
ruemilley's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
torgotorgo's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
antoniag's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
ghostbird12's review against another edition
extremely unsatisfying and ultimately uninteresting
- boring
- dumb twists/corny
- what was the entire point of the book? is there a central message?
- disappointed there was barely any romance for a book about online dating
- way too long
- all the characters were unlikeable except becks who was interesting and jude who was slightly more compelling
- sibling dynamic wasn’t compelling and if the author was trying to connect it to iris/sarah’s dynamic, wasn’t effective
- wish she would shut up about inspector yuan. not clever enough to be making meta commentary.
- boring
- dumb twists/corny
- what was the entire point of the book? is there a central message?
- disappointed there was barely any romance for a book about online dating
- way too long
- all the characters were unlikeable except becks who was interesting and jude who was slightly more compelling
- sibling dynamic wasn’t compelling and if the author was trying to connect it to iris/sarah’s dynamic, wasn’t effective
- wish she would shut up about inspector yuan. not clever enough to be making meta commentary.
k8clark's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
sheacb's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
makifanclub's review
1.0
A book that I only finished through pure rage and spite (and because it was for book club). The mystery was not particularly compelling, the family drama subplot was also kind of boring, and the protagonist was extremely insufferable. And just because you acknowledge within the narrative that what's going on is a total mystery novel cliche doesn't actually make it any less cliche or annoying. The writing was also kind of bizarre when it came to the dialogue. Half the time the author would break in the middle of a conversation to just summarize what a character had said, rather than actually writing out the dialogue, and it made me feel like I was reading a newspaper article or something. It seems like dialogue may not be her strong suit.
But my biggest issue was that the whole message of the book, that these tech companies are evil because they're collecting so much data about their users (which, for the record, I agree with) is completely undercut by the protagonists' willingness to use that exact same massive amount of personal data to their own benefit. As someone who works in the tech industry and has taken the most basic of privacy training courses, I knew from the start that there was no way they were actually working with the matchmaking companies to acquire this data, because the Veracity people did so much shocking mismanagement of it. It's not just for their "detective" work, which was kind of horrifying enough on its own. Like, yes, it's bad to ghost people or lie about your job on a dating app, but does that mean it's justified for some randos to hack your phone, read all your private messages, and start physically stalking you around New York? But the main character takes it so much further than what could possibly be justified by her job duties. With literally 0 qualms and 0 reflection on the ethics of what she's doing, Claudia also uses her access to all this hacked data to stalk her sister's boyfriend. Literally just some guy! Nothing to do with the murder case at all! And she's been given free reign to do this from her apparently unmanaged personal device! HR workers everywhere are having heart attacks!!! It made everyone at Veracity seem so hypocritical that I just couldn't root for them. Genuinely, what is this book even trying to say? It's fine to go to great lengths to expose people for lying on dating apps when we do it the manual way by literally stalking them, but when the tech companies use bots to accomplish the same thing, it's really bad, actually? The hacking itself for the purpose of exposing a conspiracy is not really the issue, but also leveraging that private data into this (apparently extremely lucrative) PI business just makes the so-called good guys come off so....slimy.
Anyways, I will cut myself off here. All of this is probably something that bothers me disproportionately because of my job and my own experience. But when the whole core concept of the story is this appalling to me, the rest of the book was probably doomed from the start, even if the mystery and the characters had been better written. In any case, I really don't recommend this one.
But my biggest issue was that the whole message of the book, that these tech companies are evil because they're collecting so much data about their users (which, for the record, I agree with) is completely undercut by the protagonists' willingness to use that exact same massive amount of personal data to their own benefit. As someone who works in the tech industry and has taken the most basic of privacy training courses, I knew from the start that there was no way they were actually working with the matchmaking companies to acquire this data, because the Veracity people did so much shocking mismanagement of it. It's not just for their "detective" work, which was kind of horrifying enough on its own. Like, yes, it's bad to ghost people or lie about your job on a dating app, but does that mean it's justified for some randos to hack your phone, read all your private messages, and start physically stalking you around New York? But the main character takes it so much further than what could possibly be justified by her job duties. With literally 0 qualms and 0 reflection on the ethics of what she's doing, Claudia also uses her access to all this hacked data to stalk her sister's boyfriend. Literally just some guy! Nothing to do with the murder case at all! And she's been given free reign to do this from her apparently unmanaged personal device! HR workers everywhere are having heart attacks!!! It made everyone at Veracity seem so hypocritical that I just couldn't root for them. Genuinely, what is this book even trying to say? It's fine to go to great lengths to expose people for lying on dating apps when we do it the manual way by literally stalking them, but when the tech companies use bots to accomplish the same thing, it's really bad, actually? The hacking itself for the purpose of exposing a conspiracy is not really the issue, but also leveraging that private data into this (apparently extremely lucrative) PI business just makes the so-called good guys come off so....slimy.
Anyways, I will cut myself off here. All of this is probably something that bothers me disproportionately because of my job and my own experience. But when the whole core concept of the story is this appalling to me, the rest of the book was probably doomed from the start, even if the mystery and the characters had been better written. In any case, I really don't recommend this one.
dreamsoflondon's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
lameufquilit's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5