| Title | : | Tell Me My Name |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0593109724 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780593109724 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 |
| Publication | : | First published March 9, 2021 |
On wealthy Commodore Island, Fern is watching and waiting--for summer, for college, for her childhood best friend to decide he loves her. Then Ivy Avila lands on the island like a falling star. When Ivy shines on her, Fern feels seen. When they're together, Fern has purpose. She glimpses the secrets Ivy hides behind her fame, her fortune, the lavish parties she throws at her great glass house, and understands that Ivy hurts in ways Fern can't fathom. And soon, it's clear Ivy wants someone Fern can help her get. But as the two pull closer, Fern's cozy life on Commodore unravels: drought descends, fires burn, and a reckless night spins out of control. Everything Fern thought she understood--about her home, herself, the boy she loved, about Ivy Avila--twists and bends into something new. And Fern won't emerge the same person she was.
An enthralling, mind-altering fever dream, Tell Me My Name is about the cost of being a girl in a world that takes so much, and the enormity of what is regained when we take it back.
Tell Me My Name Reviews
-
”We are animals. We are ruthless. We are tired of being prey.”
Let me start off by saying that this one is a doozy. I mean, as soon as I thought I knew what was going on things went left, and after I adjusted to things going left, they took a right turn. All that said, I truly enjoyed Tell Me My Name! The writing is unique, and almost feels like some form of poetry at points. Throughout the story we follow Fern who is just a good, level headed, middle-class girl living on Commodore Island. She lives a pretty boring life, with her two Dads and lazy cat, but is finally brought into the fold of the Commodore island elite when her childhood crush’s girlfriend, Tami, and new resident celebrity, Ivy Avila, decide they both need her around this summer. Fern assumes Tami has bad intentions, but hopes hanging out with her will get her closer to Ash. And she’d be a fool to not spend every minute she can with the shining star that is Ivy.
Honestly. There isn’t too much I can say about this book without spoiling it. I think I’ll keep it simple and say if you’re looking for a unique story, that will also pack a powerful impactful punch, then you MUST pick this up. It’s sold as a gender bent Great Gatsby, and I definitely got those vibes many times while reading. I just know that as much as this was a rollercoaster of a story it was a memorable one, and one I would recommend to any friend looking for something entertaining with depth.
”How do you make something real out of a secret?”
AVAILABLE NOW!
*ARC -
this book said "gender-flipped, feminist retelling of The Great Gatsby" and that's all I needed to hear
-
“𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬. 𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞. 𝐍𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞. 𝐀 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐦. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞.”
I really do not like to give bad reviews because I get that it’s hard work making a book. From writing to editing and all the other crazy aspects of publishing a book. And of course the author wants their creation to be loved. So I don’t take reviewing lightly.
That being said I just couldn’t love this one.
It’s supposed to be a young adult, gender swapping retelling of The Great Gatsby. And it really did follow it pretty well except for a couple twists that distinguishes it from the original, weaving a story with mental health issues a plenty.
Fern is a mild mannered kind of loser main character, who Ivy Avilla, a big movie/pop star (think Selena Gomez..that’s who I pictured anyways..lol) that just got out rehab, moved next door to. Ivy takes an interest in Fern right away and eventually asks Fern to reacquaint her with Ash, whom she met a couple of years ago on a vacation. She moved onto the island off of Seattle to restart their romance. At the same time Fern is also pining over Ash. But he has a horrible, beautiful and rich girlfriend Tami. Tami also has a side piece, just like her male counter part in Gatsby.
Seems easy enough to understand right?
But no it is not. The story is so hard to follow with statements like “Maybe now is when I would look at Ash and he’d be staring right at me, our eyes would meet, and Tami would fade away.” But Ash is not even around and Fern seems to have had a full conversation with him and you find it’s all in her head. But these “conversations” happen quite a bit and it made me confused and just irritated at times. I get Fern wanted these situations to happen but it just didn’t flow well to me.
And the characters were all assholes, every single one of them and worse they had no real depth. I did feel sorry for Ivy I as the reader learned some of this things that happened to to shape her and probably why she landed in rehab in the first place. But it wasn’t enough to give her true character.
What I did really appreciate was the authors note which helped me understand what this story represented to her and to be honest helped bump up it to 2 stars.
This story may not have been for me but we all don’t have the same taste. And I have also seen several good reviews, so if the synopsis appeals to you I say take a chance and see what you think.
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝗪𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠:
𝐃𝐫𝐮𝐠 𝐀𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐞, 𝐕𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞𝐬, 𝐀𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐞
𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯 𝘛𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘈𝘙𝘊 𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸. -
Thank you to PenguinTeen and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
I honestly feel terrible for giving this two stars, but I have no idea what I just read. Tell Me My Name started out weird, but I assumed it would because it is compared to We Were Liars. I actually enjoyed the beginning of this and getting to know Fern.
Fern has a nice life, but she is seen as a loner she doesn't have many friends. A huge superstar moves onto the same street where she lives and from the first moment she sees Ivy she wants to be friends with her and would do anything for her. Fern also starts hanging out with Tami who she has known her whole life. Tami is dating Ash who Fern has been in love with for years. Fern starts spiraling out of control once she starts hanging out with these people.
Honestly, I hated every single character in this book so much. Ivy was horrible and just used people over and over again. Tami was actually crazy and loved to humiliate people for fun. Ash was a piece of absolute garbage who again used people. Fern was just straight up annoying. By the end of reading this I was glad it was over.
I get this is a Gastby retelling, I only see vague similarities though. I am outraged that this is compared to We Were Liars because while they both had unreliable narrators, We Were Liars ending with the biggest plot twist and a bang. Tell Me My Name ending and I didn't get it, it wasn't a twist. I have so many unanswered questions. It was honestly just hard to read this because half the time I have no idea what's going on, I don't know why half the stuff was randomly thrown in during chapters. It was all so random. I didn't get the point of this either.
While I wanted to love this and I love the authors other books, this one just didn't do it for me. This is 100% my opinion and if this sounds like a good book to you, please pick it up and give it a try. You may think it's an amazing book! -
Tell Me My Name
By Amy Reed
This was a unique YA novel that is set sometime in a future in a collapsing world where corporations thrive and white supremacy is at an all time high. The story is centered in an island off Seattle and Fern whose middle class and boring existence she finds herself drawn to the rich and popular. in a story of contrasts, with an amazing world building, a story full of unexpected twists that touches upon addiction and mental health. A hard to put down story that will move you in this poignant and breathtaking story. -
Have you ever read a book that escalated to the point where you were just so confused but couldn’t stop reading anyway? Yeah, that was me.
This was pitched as a gender-bent, feminist version of The Great Gatsby. Of course, me being the extremely cultured human I am…hasn’t actually read The Great Gatsby yet. But no matter! I still appreciated the story of this book on my own, and it’s inspired me to read the source material. But basically, this follows a girl named Fern, whose life is turned upside down when the rich and famous Ivy Avila moves in next door.
Amy Reed’s worldbuilding is incredible. This story takes place in a “future America”, where the environment is collapsing, white supremacy is at a high, corporations are thriving, and countless refugees struggle for a place to live. Fern lives in Seattle, on an island where the rich come to waste their summers. Reed is absolutely brilliant at depicting the gap between the ignorance of the wealthy and the plight of everyone else. When Fern gets pulled into the rich, glamorous lives of people like Ivy, they visit the city where protests rage, where people are suffering. The contrast is written in such a haunting, bone-chilling way throughout the book.
Now you might be asking: how did I actually feel about the book? I’m honestly confused. The plot was executed well, albeit a bit confusing, if you’ve read the entire book. This isn’t a book you can DNF, because the absolute chaos of the second half sets up for one heck of an ending. Every relationship is tied into each other, from mean girl Tami, to hot boy Ash, to new girl Ivy. And then there’s Fern. As the tension ramped up, I actually found myself leaning forward with anticipation because I couldn’t stop reading about the trainwreck that I knew was coming. Speaking of which, another detail I loved was how, as Fern and Ivy spend the summer together, wildfires are slowly encroaching closer and closer. Again: this had one of the most explosive endings I’ve ever read.
OKAY. BUT. I don’t want to spoil anything, but this was truly one of the most sensitive, profound books I’ve read about trauma and how easily young girls can be taken advantage of. It’s a story that deals with mental health and addiction. And yet, even with so many topics contained within one book, Reed managed to fit them into the puzzle of her own making perfectly.
I don’t want to say anymore, because I do believe that you should go into this blind! You’ll most likely be dreadfully confused at some point, but if you enjoy psychological thrillers and/or The Great Gatsby, please stick to the end! It truly is a whirlwind story with more depth than I personally could have possibly imagined. It reminds me of a more complex, more richly-imagined We Were Liars. 3.5/5 stars. -
DNF 17%
I am not enjoying this because the writing style is too choppy. I suspect this is a device to reflect the main characters state of mind. I don't care enough to find out if I'm right. -
I loved this book. Here is my blurb of it:
“A harrowing, prescient vision of the near future. Amy Reed delivers a compelling and propulsive thriller with sentences that gleam like polished steel.” -
DNF pg. 70-something.
I can't deal with the characters being unlikable in a non-fun way AND with this being a climate-crisis dystopian world, which I didn't expect, and a retelling on top of that. Plus I read a spoiler for the ending and ehhhh. -
I picked this up from a random shelf in my library. I hadn't read the synopsis, but it looked like the kind of book I'd like. I was wrong.
Fern (not the most creative name), is a teenage girl who lives on Commodore Island, a rich, artificial place off the coast of Seattle that's supposed to be a place where rich, artificial people can hide away from everything while the rest of world falls apart. She is, essentially, what you would consider as a "goody two-shoes." She follows the rules, she listens to her fathers, and avoids the follies of all the frivilous and rich people who inhabit Commodore Island. That is, until Ivy Avila (another uncreative name; you basically just named her Ivy Ivylla and changed the letters a little), shows up and Fern loses her self-will and begins to follow Ivy around like a mouse attached to a string. Romance happens. Bad decisions are made. There's some inconsequential tidbits about self discovery. Eventually, I'm left sitting with my mouth slightly open and attempting to understand just what I spent the last 4 days reading.
My main problem was the plot. It wasn't rushed, but I had a hard time understanding what was happening throughout the story. It was scattered. And it was supposed to be a retelling of The Great Gatsby, which I didn't see clearly.
The characters were boring. Fern, who I can't describe as anything except a dependant follower. Ivy, a self-destructive movie star who I admit has been through some awful stuff but still seems frivilous. The other guy who's name I've forgotton who's a jerk who hides under the guise of the innocent guitarist. All of them boring, shallow, and annoying to read about.
So overall, I'd give this 2/5 stars. I didn't hate it. I didn't like it. I just read it without understanding any of it. -
Holy unreliable narrator, Batman.
What the heck did I just read?
Amy Reed writes beautiful prose, metaphoric, lyrical, unique. I think I have to reread TELL ME MY NAME to truly understand this book in the way I’m supposed to understand it.
For a while I wasn’t certain if Fern was real or a ghost. I *think* she is supposed to be one of Ivy’s alters, but Reed writes her as a separate entity who interacts with Ivy including through text. Does Fern narrate the story as a host alter? If she’s part of Ivy, are her gay dads figment’s of Ivy’s mental illness or her actual bio bad and his husband? I’m so confused. If anyone has the answers, please DM me.
TELL ME MY NAME is supposed to be a gender bending retelling of Gatsby, but the only similarities I saw were opulence and a hit-and-run.
I hope for more insight from someone.
ETA: the author’s note explains that Ivy does have DID and that she took some creative license with the depiction of the condition. I still don’t quite understand all of what’s real and what’s hallucinations.
ETA: knowing the story, I enjoyed the audiobook. Had I not known the story, I’d be just as confused as I was reading. -
★★★★☆ 3.5/5
thank you to penguinteen and netgallery for the arc!
this book pleasantly surprised me. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books ever, so i was practically itching to get my hands on this book. and boy was it worth it.
i anticipated the twist at the end though i didn’t mind because it was a damn good twist and foreshadowed perfectly. though it is a bit confusing the way it is handled, though that could be just me.
this book will fuck with your mind but you won’t realize it at first. it snuck up on me in such a beautiful way.
also, the characters are DEAD ON. every single one. just amazingly done. -
The narrator's voice is probably not for everyone and the mystery is a little predictable due to the nature of the story, but I enjoyed seeing where it went overall.
I received an ecopy of this through Netgalley; however, all opinions are my own. -
After spending almost 30% of the book being confused as fuck and reading other reviewers reviews I’ve decided to Dnf this. I’m so sad because I loved Nowhere Girls and Reed seems to always have hard hitting contemporaries but this writing style was just not it. I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters because they all equally sucked.
-
I was provided an ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
I honestly don't know where to start.
Maybe you will like this. Maybe I did not. Maybe you like conditional so much you will find this perfect. Maybe this was very annoying for me to read and exhausting and the constant hypothetical had me going back to check what was what. Maybe there was a lot of maybes. Maybe the characters were unlikable and maybe there was so much cheating all over. Maybe the twist confused me even more because it seemed impossible at times.
Ok I'm done. I don't want to spend more time on this book than I already have. I just want to add that this was so very disappointing to me because I've read a couple other books by Amy Reed and I loved loved loved The Nowhere Girls, I was really expecting to love this... -
I see what she did there...
This is the kind of dark and twisted psychological thriller with a slight side (as she mentions in the note) of The Great Gatsby about how the other half lives. It reminds me of a quirky book I read a long while back to review (that obviously wasn't memorable enough to remember the name) and Amy Chelsea Stacey Dee too.
It's got the power and fame and the lure of that all while also still trying to remain true to yourself even when there's trauma. It all wraps around as a YA fiction book that shows the bad so that things can be learned and readers can grow. -
i’ve seen this book described as a modern, feminist retelling of The Great Gatsby, and i have to admit that that hits the mark - but it is also a lot more than that.
i’ve developed this bad habit of mentally writing my review for a book while still reading it, but it has allowed me to collect a variety of scraps and phrases to describe the sensation of reading it. (and it truly was a sensation). imagine a book where the main character is not the main character of her own story, and viola, you’ve got a taste of what ‘tell me my name’ is like. fern is there, viewing things, seeing things, but she is not changing things: she is simply there. spoiler alert ahead in this next sentence: at the heart of this story is dissociative identity disorder, something that you begin to get the feeling of around the halfway mark. i grew itchy just waiting for the twist, waiting for the reveal that fern is no longer alive, no longer truly there (but the ending still managed to shock me, and i don’t know if this is an insult to myself or a commend to amy reed’s brilliant writing.) i’ve read books before where the plot twist is that the main character’s friend was a figment of their imagination, a fragment of their own mind, the entire time, but this book was unique and inventive in that the main character /is/ the fragmentation. that being said, i still felt a deep connection to fern, at times. i, too, feel as if i am not always the main character of my own story, like i am always on the outskirts looking in. my experience with mental illness, with depression and anxiety, has led to me often feeling like i have missed - and continue to miss - vital milestones within my own life. i feel the most alone when i am with other people who are not acknowledging me, when i am there and not there, all at once. i am not certain if it was amy’s intention to snapshot this emotion when writing this story, but she still hit the mark perfectly. i also tend to give a lot of myself when reading a particularly absorbing book, so i spent the day binge-reading this and feeling ghostly.
in addition to the plot and main characters, which slowly degrades into the delirious and dissociative, shiny things that gradually fade, there is also a dystopian aspect. even more chilling is the fact that it is so closely borrowed from our own world. it feels less like fiction and more like our near future. global warming and natural disasters are mentioned throughout the story, as well as protests and the objectification and abuse of female bodies.
i gave this book three stars purely because i am not certain that psychological thrillers are really my thing. i was left with a sort of itchy, impatient sensation lingering just underneath my skin - which i think means that the exact right mark was hit. amy reed’s writing is always stunning, always interspersed with feminism and quotes that make you want to grab a pen and write them down immediately. her other books are more my speed, but i can still appreciate her desire to write this one, and the art of it from an objective standpoint. -
I received a physical copy of this book via Penguin Random House in exchange for my honest review, this gift has not influenced my review at all. Many thanks to PRH.
I struggled on where to rate this book, whether it was a three or four-star book. Firstly, a quick synopsis. When we first meet our narrator Fern, it appears she lives quite an average life. She lives on a small tourist trap island that draws in the rich, lets them look at the beauty of the island before they leave again. Fern lives with her adoptive fathers and her cat in a former church, she has her best friend Lily and a crush on her childhood best friend, Ash. She's simple. Average and boring. Until she meets Ivy. Ivy is a child star who rose to fame quickly but burnt out even quicker. A life of overworking, a mother who uses her and a world of drinking, drugs and partying is a bad mix and after a stint in rehab, Ivy and her mother move to the island. When Ivy chooses Fern to be her friend, Fern is immediately obsessed. Obsessed to the point where the lines start blurring between who is Ivy and who is Fern.
This book tackled a topic I hadn't seen explored much in YA lit
The writing style in this book was nice, I think Amy Reed has an almost poetic way of telling a story and leaving you just on edge enough that you want to keep going. I thought originally this book was going along the likes of We Were Liars, you know, the summer that changed it all trope. While it did have that kind of element to it, the world this book is set in is so good. Just dystopian enough to make it different from current reality but also not so far away. Forest fires, polluted air, electric cars, a single overseeing corporation that control all jobs, industry and media, police drones, resistance protests. This world was harrowing in the sense it was visible. This is a world that isn't too far off our own. -
"There is a theory that souls travel in packs, across life-times, repeating the same stories over and over again, everyone playing the same roles, everyone on their own karmic journeys, waiting for someone to wake up and break the cycle."
I didn't necessarily like this book, but I was magnetically drawn to it, hypnotized by the story. There was this calm and quiet, yet unsettling aura surrounding it, it immediately sucked me in. And even though I'm not normally a fan of overly poetic, choppy writing style, I didn't mind it here. Characters were also pretty horrible, but I didn't mind that either.
What I did mind was the ending.
Absolutely hated it.
It seemed the author tried to pull a la We Were Liars plot twist, but failed miserably. -
All you need to do is say gender-flipped Gatsby and I come running.
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DNF - page 53 (16%)
The writing is NOT doing it for me. 😔 -
2.5⭐
Tell Me My Name is a YA Gatsby retelling, and it's the first of many Gatsby-related books that I hope to read now that it's in the public domain! I initially enjoyed this book, but my interest started to wane after a while. It felt like there were two different books happening, and things got unnecessarily complicated for the sake of a twist. I liked the concept more than the execution.
CW - racism, classism, domestic abuse, addiction, cheating, mentions of rape -
Actual rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Even though this isn't part of my Unpopular Opinion series, I'm going to add the tag anyway because it looks like this novel's reception is divided, mostly lukewarm. Meanwhile, I really liked this outside of one skin color = food drop and just how quickly and debaucherous this novel became with the vacant blink of an eye. While I shouldn't have been surprised, it took me off guard.
However, Reed's newest novel is nothing short of brilliant. A gender-swapped and queer Gatsby with an effective, emotionally distant protagonist , brilliant fragments of prose, and an unlikable cast with human motivations and awful centers, this novel gripped me by the teeth and refused to let go. Tell Me My Name will never be forgotten for its brilliant examination on men in power and how women can reclaim their bodies and power, even if they're battered and abused by a system that will not let them. -
DNF.
-
1.5 rounded to 2
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This is a beautiful Great Gatsby inspired story, that I can see is going to a pretty divisive one!
If you enjoy lyrical, ambiguous writing and story telling, that never truely explains things, and leaves you feeling somewhat unsettled, then you’ll enjoy this!
If you prefer more traditional, straight forward stories then maybe skip this one.
I personally love this style of writing, and this has such a powerful message- I’m going to be thinking about this one for awhile! -
Hannah is banned from picking books for book club
because this was a constant stream of what the FUCKERY, with an added dash of what the HELL from the author’s note. -
Weird and beautiful and haunting and wild and confusing and unexpected and strange.
-
I tried my best to understand what was going on with this book! I sadly couldn’t. Guess all the hype from starred reviews got me. DNF’d at 20%
-
This book is described as a gender flipped, psychological thriller, Gatsby retelling, and that premise had me so excited, but I was not a fan of this at all.
The story is set in a dystopian future where climate change and wealth inequality have made a mess of the world. Our main character Fern lives on an island near Seattle, which still has some semblance of charm and nature, for those wealthy enough to afford it. One summer, superstar Ivy Avila moves in next door and befriends her, and Fern becomes intensely fixated on her, spiraling into a whirlwind of parties, drugs, and sex, and begins to lose herself in the process.
Honestly, I think this was a solid premise, but the execution just got really wonky for me. I love the idea of a Gatsby retelling from a teen girl POV, and with an emphasis on more modern social commentaries. I also thought this book captured the essence of the characters and issues in The Great Gatsby very well.
Unfortunately, it seemed like this book wasn't sure what it wanted to be, in several respects. There were times when it read like a very young YA dating drama, and other times where it felt like it wanted to be gritty adult post-modern lit-fic that an english teacher would force you to analyze, and other times where it felt like it wanted to be a hard-hitting exploration of issues like climate change, wealth inequality, addiction, neglect, abuse, etc. etc. For me, this was not a good mix of moods, and it just came off as sloppy and indecisive. The psychological thriller aspects didn't come into play until the very end, so the majority of this book was just a drama, despite it's description as a mystery/thriller. The writing tried too hard to be smart and deep, while actually not really saying anything new or insightful and ultimately just feeling nonsensical and artificial. The "teen" angle of this book was all over the place, as the characters fluctuate from fretting over being grounded or if their crush likes them back, to weirdly adult depictions of them like, having affairs with married people and doing drug-addled threesomes? Long story short, this just wasn't my jam.
Still, thank you to Penguin Teen for a review copy of this!
