*Spoilers ahead, proceed at your own accord.
This is not Colleen Hoover’s typical writing venture—yes, there’s romance, but there’s also murder, which immediately peaked my interest as a true crime fanatic.
While reading, I found myself most attracted to the plot (up until the end, that is). The characters didn’t offer anything exciting or new—in fact, they were quite plain (other than Crew, and the dead girls). The love interest, Jeremy, was nothing but a love interest. Lowen, whose real name I genuinely didn’t know until the end of the book, gave readers a whole lot of fluff, considering she’s almost always referred to by her pen name. Other than the loss of her mother, and her current cheating debacle, she is a very two dimensional main character. There isn’t much to be said about Verity either other than “???” and “what the fu*k?”.
The writing didn’t offer much either; there were a lot of descriptions of sex. And I mean a lot. On a more positive note, the descriptive skill with which Hoover writes is remarkable, as always (and this isn’t limited to the descriptions of sex).
Fast forward to the end: I was met with a ton of unanswered questions, confusion, and frustration. I hated the ending. It ruined the entire book for me. Instead of ending with a bang, the book just dissipated like a rotten firework. I found myself sitting at the end of my bed repeating the words “what the fu*k” because terminating the novel in that way made zero sense to me. It felt like a pathetic excuse for an actual ending.
I hate completely bashing this book. Colleen Hoover attempted branching genres, and I believe she should try again. This book had so much potential—maybe it’s just me, but it could’ve been creepier, darker, and heavier.
