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A review by a_mae13
The Merciless by Danielle Vega
1.0
"After all, everyone has their own sins to confess."
Yeah, no. Don't ask me what happened in this book. The blurb promises a Mean Girls meets thriller style of story, but the result reads more like a B-list horror film equipped with bad acting, horrible scripts, and sets that are almost worse than the glaring plotholes. Our main character is Sofia Flores, the new girl. She's torn between being friends with Brooklyn, who's the goth outcast, and the group of rich, popular girls. And in true Mean Girls fashion, she befriends both and reports back to the other, throughout the entire book.
How could this go wrong? How could it be different from Mean Girls the movie? Well, demons. That's how. The popular girl group has a hyper-religious ring leader, Riley. She's obsessed with Brooklyn and thinks she is possessed by a demon. She wants the girls to all meet at her bougie mansion and perform an exorcism on Brooklyn, against her will. Sofia thinks that Riley's mad because Brooklyn was seen with Riley's boyfriend at a party. That may be part of her motive, but it's definitely not clear. Somehow, the girls manage to throw this little exorcism party...only to discover that Riley is absolutely unhinged.
Riley has the entire house nailed shut; windows are covered, doors are locked, and there are no extra keys. She is overly brutal with Brooklyn since she won't admit that she's possessed. Which, I don't know how one would know if they're possessed, but anyway. Sofia starts to side with Brooklyn because she feels bad for all of the abuse and torture. Riley rips off one of Brooklyn's fingernails. Once the girls realize that Sofia is switching sides, actual chaos breaks.The entire house is turned into a house of horrors: Riley tries to drown Brooklyn. Brooklyn escapes and starts to fight back with all the popular girls. And then, Brooklyn kills one of them. Why? Because she is, in fact, a demon.
The rest of the book is Brooklyn offing the girls one by one and Sofia trying to stop her. She didn't want any of them to die, even though Riley also tried to drown her and broke into her house. She wanted everyone to get along and be friends. I felt like that was a weird personality trait for Sofia since the book foreshadowed her "dark past" up until the very end, where we discover that Sofia ALSO KILLED SOMEONE by pushing her IN FRONT OF A TRAIN. Why? Sofia, too, is a demon. Not a single thing in this book made sense. I've read Bunny by Mona Awad and felt like this tried to be like that. The popular girl group takes in an outcast, only to discover that group is just as horrifying as being an outcast. But I loved Bunny, it was so weird and shocking...but The Merciless? Hard pass.
Yeah, no. Don't ask me what happened in this book. The blurb promises a Mean Girls meets thriller style of story, but the result reads more like a B-list horror film equipped with bad acting, horrible scripts, and sets that are almost worse than the glaring plotholes. Our main character is Sofia Flores, the new girl. She's torn between being friends with Brooklyn, who's the goth outcast, and the group of rich, popular girls. And in true Mean Girls fashion, she befriends both and reports back to the other, throughout the entire book.
How could this go wrong? How could it be different from Mean Girls the movie? Well, demons. That's how. The popular girl group has a hyper-religious ring leader, Riley. She's obsessed with Brooklyn and thinks she is possessed by a demon. She wants the girls to all meet at her bougie mansion and perform an exorcism on Brooklyn, against her will. Sofia thinks that Riley's mad because Brooklyn was seen with Riley's boyfriend at a party. That may be part of her motive, but it's definitely not clear. Somehow, the girls manage to throw this little exorcism party...only to discover that Riley is absolutely unhinged.
Riley has the entire house nailed shut; windows are covered, doors are locked, and there are no extra keys. She is overly brutal with Brooklyn since she won't admit that she's possessed. Which, I don't know how one would know if they're possessed, but anyway. Sofia starts to side with Brooklyn because she feels bad for all of the abuse and torture. Riley rips off one of Brooklyn's fingernails. Once the girls realize that Sofia is switching sides, actual chaos breaks.
The rest of the book is Brooklyn offing the girls one by one and Sofia trying to stop her. She didn't want any of them to die, even though Riley also tried to drown her and broke into her house. She wanted everyone to get along and be friends. I felt like that was a weird personality trait for Sofia since the book foreshadowed her "dark past" up until the very end, where we discover that Sofia ALSO KILLED SOMEONE by pushing her IN FRONT OF A TRAIN. Why? Sofia, too, is a demon.