emmaward55's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I'm so torn with this book. On the one hand, I love the writing, themes, plot and characters: I'd absolutely snap up a whole Poirot-length series about them!
My only gripe comes with the ending, and I admit that it's more of a personal dislike than a flaw on Schachte's writing ability. I enjoyed the gritty and realistic take on the justice system and how unfair it is to girls like Ava and Lucy. What I didn't like is
The difficulty here is that a sunshine and rainbows happy ending would have been too unrealistic, but I think Schachte could have found a medium. Leave the fate of Ava's killers unknown, but have a scene with Flora reconnecting with VT and vowing to get through it together. In my opinion, books that tackle weighty subject matters like this need to leave the reader wanting to fight. We all know of girls and women brutalized in our real lives, and we need that hope to survive it.
Without that hope, how can we ever leave our homes again?
My only gripe comes with the ending, and I admit that it's more of a personal dislike than a flaw on Schachte's writing ability. I enjoyed the gritty and realistic take on the justice system and how unfair it is to girls like Ava and Lucy. What I didn't like is
Spoiler
how hopeless it all feels at the end. Yes, we the reader know who really killed Ava and why, but the book leaves little hope that her killer will ever face any real justice. Instead, the system failed Flora once again and she's left even more beaten than before, both physically and emotionally. The message seems to be "why try? Bad guys always win and the people seeking justice take all the damage".The difficulty here is that a sunshine and rainbows happy ending would have been too unrealistic, but I think Schachte could have found a medium. Leave the fate of Ava's killers unknown, but have a scene with Flora reconnecting with VT and vowing to get through it together. In my opinion, books that tackle weighty subject matters like this need to leave the reader wanting to fight. We all know of girls and women brutalized in our real lives, and we need that hope to survive it.
Without that hope, how can we ever leave our homes again?
Content Warnings
A sapphic character is murdered at the start, though it's never even suggested that her sexuality was the reason for it.
prettiestkitty_'s review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
kaitumaneng's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
st4rgir1's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
isa1864's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
leedavis's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
ksavinda17's review
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
lilacbookpages's review
1.5
Dnf at 40% I am DNF-ing this book because the ending made me so upset and made the entire book seem worthless (yes I skipped ahead because I have no self control, and no it doesn't seem like there is going to be a sequel any time soon)
Don't insult Nancy drew by comparing her to Flora please. I get it, they've both got mommy issues, but one of them is good at their job and the other just keeps yelling at people till it works out.
The extra half star is for how engaging and fast paced this book is. If it weren't for all the things that fundamentally bothered me, this would have been a really solid YA murder mystery.
I will say, I disagree with all the reviews that say Flora is unlikeable. She's a teenage girl who has very obvious and severe PTSD that no one is treating, an absentee mother who makes it clear she doesn't care about Flora, and a strong moral compass that leads to people harassing her. She is selfish and mean, and she does a lot of stupid things, but I think adult readers of YA often forget that YA main characters are teenagers. Flora does a lot of stupid shit, she burns a lot of bridges that she genuinely needs, but she's also only 16 years old. She thinks she's doing the right thing!!
And honestly, I think a lot of the frustration people have is with the fact that the author spent so much time trying to make Flora snarky and QuIrKy and different, that she forget to really develop her. These "unlikeable" traits are all things that should be slowly addressed over the course of a story, but none of them are.
I will defend almost all teenage girl main characters.
Anyway. I'm gonna spoil a whole bunch now.
Here is a list of things in this book that I seriously disliked
- I immediately disliked that the murder victim was a queer black girl. I was waiting for it to be fully addressed, and instead it kept being like "no one is safe, girls get hurt all the time", which is valid, but the other girls getting hurt in this book are white girls, and it has not been addressed that that is not the same. And then to undercut it all with the fact that Ava is in many ways one of the main villains of this story??
- she kept saying "I know what no one else does: that none of us are safe." OVER AND OVER. It's giving not like other girls. Why does this 16 year old girl think she's the only woman or person on earth who knows life is dangerous??? Does she genuinely think the other girls she knows don't know how dangerous being a woman is??? Even if they weren't aware of murders in their own town (which they ALL are), the internet is a vast database of all the ways that women can be hurt. It was both repetitive and irritating
- I don't think Flora is very good at this. Most of the information she's gotten up to this point has been from other people just telling her things. Like, the majority of the clues she has she barely even had to ask for. People resist telling her for like two minutes and then they give in and tell her SO MUCH INFORMATION. I'm offended at the constant comparisons to Nancy drew.
- I don't like that the death a queer woman was used to start a story that includes a heterosexual relationship. I like it when bi characters get to express themselves fully like this, but I don't see any reason that Flora had to have dated Ava. Especially because it honestly doesn't really motivate her very much. The real motivation is that she finds Ava as she's dying, and she has obvious PTSD from this. Her rage towards not getting justice for Lucy, a character we never meet and who died years prior, is a bigger motivator than Flora's relationship to Ava. It feels like the author wanted to "prove" that Flora was bisexual and could only think to do that by adding in her feelings for Ava.
- dude. that fucking ending. It was messy, it was lazy, it was upsetting. it comes out of fucking nowhere, and it renders most of the character development in the book useless. It was so unnecessary and made the book way less enjoyable in the parts that I read. Why would I want to continue a story where a relationship is developed and central to the plot, only for one of the members of that relationship to be killed off IN THE LAST TWO PAGES. WHO DOES THAT. AT LEAST GIVE IT MORE TIME???
- the ending, both the death in the last two pages and all of the rest of it, seem to just happen to add to Flora's suffering. This is a girl, a child, who has seen first hand what suffering looks like, especially for young women. The story really harps on the fact that Flora is doing all of this because women and girls deserve justice, that they shouldn't have to suffer the way Lucy and Ava have. But in the end, the story itself refuses to give Flora justice and instead adds to her never-ending list of suffering. It undermines the core value that drives the story, and it also pushes the book from a feminist novel about finding justice wherever you can to just another story of a girl being absolutely beat up by the world. I am a mystery and murder mystery lover to my core, but I am so tired of these stories telling me they're going to be about girls finding their voice and then completely shutting them down in their own narrative. There's enough bullshit in the world as it is, I think it's okay if we let the teenage girl protagonist end the story with love and as much happiness as she can find given the trauma she's experienced. The value of a shocking ending is significantly less than the value of a kind one. The story is already so unkind to girls, why make the ending add on to that as well?
One last thing. This book wants you to believe it is a story of a girl going up against powerful men and winning. In reality, it is a story where women are the villains. The two main antagonists of this story, whether indirectly or directly, are both female. And while sending the killer to trial against the wishes of powerful men is certainly a girlboss power move, there is no satisfaction in it when the reality of the story is that women are not only always the victims, but will always be vilified too. Even in death.
Don't insult Nancy drew by comparing her to Flora please. I get it, they've both got mommy issues, but one of them is good at their job and the other just keeps yelling at people till it works out.
The extra half star is for how engaging and fast paced this book is. If it weren't for all the things that fundamentally bothered me, this would have been a really solid YA murder mystery.
I will say, I disagree with all the reviews that say Flora is unlikeable. She's a teenage girl who has very obvious and severe PTSD that no one is treating, an absentee mother who makes it clear she doesn't care about Flora, and a strong moral compass that leads to people harassing her. She is selfish and mean, and she does a lot of stupid things, but I think adult readers of YA often forget that YA main characters are teenagers. Flora does a lot of stupid shit, she burns a lot of bridges that she genuinely needs, but she's also only 16 years old. She thinks she's doing the right thing!!
And honestly, I think a lot of the frustration people have is with the fact that the author spent so much time trying to make Flora snarky and QuIrKy and different, that she forget to really develop her. These "unlikeable" traits are all things that should be slowly addressed over the course of a story, but none of them are.
I will defend almost all teenage girl main characters.
Anyway. I'm gonna spoil a whole bunch now.
Here is a list of things in this book that I seriously disliked
- I immediately disliked that the murder victim was a queer black girl. I was waiting for it to be fully addressed, and instead it kept being like "no one is safe, girls get hurt all the time", which is valid, but the other girls getting hurt in this book are white girls, and it has not been addressed that that is not the same. And then to undercut it all with the fact that Ava is in many ways one of the main villains of this story??
- she kept saying "I know what no one else does: that none of us are safe." OVER AND OVER. It's giving not like other girls. Why does this 16 year old girl think she's the only woman or person on earth who knows life is dangerous??? Does she genuinely think the other girls she knows don't know how dangerous being a woman is??? Even if they weren't aware of murders in their own town (which they ALL are), the internet is a vast database of all the ways that women can be hurt. It was both repetitive and irritating
- I don't think Flora is very good at this. Most of the information she's gotten up to this point has been from other people just telling her things. Like, the majority of the clues she has she barely even had to ask for. People resist telling her for like two minutes and then they give in and tell her SO MUCH INFORMATION. I'm offended at the constant comparisons to Nancy drew.
- I don't like that the death a queer woman was used to start a story that includes a heterosexual relationship. I like it when bi characters get to express themselves fully like this, but I don't see any reason that Flora had to have dated Ava. Especially because it honestly doesn't really motivate her very much. The real motivation is that she finds Ava as she's dying, and she has obvious PTSD from this. Her rage towards not getting justice for Lucy, a character we never meet and who died years prior, is a bigger motivator than Flora's relationship to Ava. It feels like the author wanted to "prove" that Flora was bisexual and could only think to do that by adding in her feelings for Ava.
- dude. that fucking ending. It was messy, it was lazy, it was upsetting. it comes out of fucking nowhere, and it renders most of the character development in the book useless. It was so unnecessary and made the book way less enjoyable in the parts that I read. Why would I want to continue a story where a relationship is developed and central to the plot, only for one of the members of that relationship to be killed off IN THE LAST TWO PAGES. WHO DOES THAT. AT LEAST GIVE IT MORE TIME???
- the ending, both the death in the last two pages and all of the rest of it, seem to just happen to add to Flora's suffering. This is a girl, a child, who has seen first hand what suffering looks like, especially for young women. The story really harps on the fact that Flora is doing all of this because women and girls deserve justice, that they shouldn't have to suffer the way Lucy and Ava have. But in the end, the story itself refuses to give Flora justice and instead adds to her never-ending list of suffering. It undermines the core value that drives the story, and it also pushes the book from a feminist novel about finding justice wherever you can to just another story of a girl being absolutely beat up by the world. I am a mystery and murder mystery lover to my core, but I am so tired of these stories telling me they're going to be about girls finding their voice and then completely shutting them down in their own narrative. There's enough bullshit in the world as it is, I think it's okay if we let the teenage girl protagonist end the story with love and as much happiness as she can find given the trauma she's experienced. The value of a shocking ending is significantly less than the value of a kind one. The story is already so unkind to girls, why make the ending add on to that as well?
One last thing. This book wants you to believe it is a story of a girl going up against powerful men and winning. In reality, it is a story where women are the villains. The two main antagonists of this story, whether indirectly or directly, are both female. And while sending the killer to trial against the wishes of powerful men is certainly a girlboss power move, there is no satisfaction in it when the reality of the story is that women are not only always the victims, but will always be vilified too. Even in death.
egoshe's review
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
tabatha_shipley's review
3.0
What I Did Like:
-Valentine. He’s a solid character with a backstory that makes sense. He improves Flora by giving her more personality and life every time he’s in a scene with her.
-Mystery. There are clues dropped along the way and you can try to piece them together along with Flora, which is always fun.
-Pace. For a book that is long (pushing 500 pages) this one moves pretty quickly. The shorter chapters and cliffhangers keep this one moving and keep your interest. The pacing is well done.
Who Should Read This One:
-Readers who like a solid mystery and don’t mind if things aren’t exactly realistic. You can suspend disbelief a little for a scary or thrilling story.
My Rating: 3 Stars. This one needed a little tightening, in my opinion, but it is still a decent mystery.
For Full Review (including what I didn’t like): https://youtu.be/r2WQ96HtwaI
-Valentine. He’s a solid character with a backstory that makes sense. He improves Flora by giving her more personality and life every time he’s in a scene with her.
-Mystery. There are clues dropped along the way and you can try to piece them together along with Flora, which is always fun.
-Pace. For a book that is long (pushing 500 pages) this one moves pretty quickly. The shorter chapters and cliffhangers keep this one moving and keep your interest. The pacing is well done.
Who Should Read This One:
-Readers who like a solid mystery and don’t mind if things aren’t exactly realistic. You can suspend disbelief a little for a scary or thrilling story.
My Rating: 3 Stars. This one needed a little tightening, in my opinion, but it is still a decent mystery.
For Full Review (including what I didn’t like): https://youtu.be/r2WQ96HtwaI