The beginning of this novel was slower than I expected for a thriller (not my usual genre, neither is YA). I was frustrated when the two main characters hadn’t met a third of the way through the book. The story picked up toward the end. 

This story is very Pretty Little Liars meets Get Out and I fear that if you aren’t a fan of both of those, you might not get through the book. 

While the overall twist was quite predictable, the smaller twists and endings weren’t so it didn’t completely set me off. What did put me off a bit was the absolutely ridiculous choices the characters make…

YOU KNOW YOURE BEING WATCHED STOP DOING THINGS YOU DONT WANT SHARED!

Teenagers, am I right? 

Also, gay! 😍

I really enjoyed the book once I got through the building of the storyline. The hierarchical encounters of an elite school didn’t catch me at first but when things started to get f’d up I got invested. Read the second half of the book in one sitting. 

i have so much i want to say about this book.

plot was solid and the symbolism/themes were woven in nicely. however i think i would have liked this more had i read it in high school (which tbf it is marketed as YA so i shouldn't be surprised), as i didn't mesh with the writing style that much. that said, i still really really enjoyed the characters.

but also goddamn the two main characters go through absolute hell and back (like legitimately. not to be taken lightly at all. several reviews have described the book as Black trauma p*rn soooooo yeah proceed at your own risk). and like, yes, i get that was probably done to really emphasize the gory, sinister nature of institutionalized racism but also neither chiamaka nor devon really saw any joy in the book? every possible horrible thing that could've happened to them did (apart from being flat-out ly*ched, and still chiamaka came very close). needless to say, they are most definitely traumatized for life after this book. which the book doesn't exactly address. and probably never intended to, given the time skip at the end. however, even during the book it is revealed that devon especially went through some horrific shit as a kid, and the PTSD/trauma response isn't really gone over aside from a brief subplot where he mentions not remembering middle school much due to the extreme violence he endured via being bullied.

overall, the book would've probably done better by being longer. i wished devon and chiamaka's friendship got more screentime, and i kinda wish devon got more closure with jack? maybe that was the point though. devon doesn't owe jack any more of his time, and there's no way in hell that they'd be friends again. i think the main thing i wish is that we got to see more of devon and jack's friendship before jack started distancing himself. because really all we were told is when devon mentions at the beginning that jack is the one person at school he'd call a friend since they'd known each other since they were kids and had a similar class background (both were scholarship kids at their private school). then devon reveals how jack has been treating him different since he came out at the end of middle school so we are led to believe (for at least the beginning part) that jack is just homophobic. then it turns out he was an active white supremacist and all of a sudden devon starts saying that jack was his best friend and talks about how much he loved him. which tbf maybe it was intentional that it took him this long to open up to the reader in his narration since most of his friendship with jack seemed to have developed during the period that was trauma blocked in devon's memory. i cared about jack because he reminded me of my family, but there wasn't much in the actual narrative to make me care about him/devon's friendship with him. so the confrontation at the end didn't hit as much as i think it was supposed to.

overall decent read, would recommend for the messages/themes.