it’s almost like chiamaka was made to be unlikeable on purpose, which is exactly what she is. she’s nothing but a privileged, people pleaser who kisses the ass of white people who don’t give a fuck about her, and by the time she came to her fucking senses it was almost too late. some of the shit that happened probably wouldn’t have happened had she learned some common fucking sense. i just couldn’t connect with her or even devon, and even though i felt immense sympathy for him, i still just didn’t really feel much of a connection. i cared more about just finding out what the mystery was than the characters, to me they just felt like cliches or tropes almost. think about it, there’s the introverted unpopular boy who’s different from everyone else and has a miserable life, suddenly getting thrusted into the spotlight, and then there’s the mean bitchy popular girl with a dark past/has a different side to her who gets knocked down a peg. i’ve seen these tropes before, so therefore it’s nothing new really. when it came to the plot i feel like the author was having way too much fun during the writing process and was like “you know what let’s just add a bunch of crazy shit to it”, like there was twist after twist after twist, like damn girl atleast gimme a moment to process the other shit i just found out about 😭 it was just slightly overwhelming for my liking.

nonetheless i liked the conversations about race and how society purposefully makes it so that black people don’t succeed, but again, i’m black, i know and have dealt with these kinds of things, so again it was nothing new. not much about this book surprised me or made me learn anything new.