I had to read this for a bookclub, knowing that I do not enjoy thrillers. And yes, I also didn’t enjoy this one. 

The mystery wasn’t all that interesting to me. Perhaps that’s what makes thrillers so uninteresting to me, the mystery is never intriguing. 

The characters were mostly annoying. They didn’t even grow to be better, which is usually how YA characters become very loveable. The only ones I could somewhat stand were Dean and Sloane. I also just lacked the diversity that I usually have in the books I read. This was painfully white and cishet. 

There was so much boy drama?? Why was most of this book boy drama?? 
The book combines many tropes that I don’t enjoy in YA. Don’t get me wrong. I love YA to shreds. But this one combined the things I don’t like. A main character with serious main character syndrome. She waltzes in, immediately expects that the boys she is interested in are also interested in her, expects everyone to open up, even though on page they’ve spent like 2 minutes together, and I could go on. The other characters are also just archetypes. I’ve seen those characters a million times before and it’s not like the book even tries to do anything interesting with it. 

The book tried too hard to seem smart. It’s an easy hole to fall in when you write about characters that are unusually smart, like a sherlock holmes character. The book tries to make it seem realistic, but idk, I’m a forensic psychologist, I’m not convinced. Especially the reasoning we do get about her conclusions are just weird. 

When I read or watch media where they have those weird programmes and a bunch of people breaking protocols it’s so annoying to me. Those protocols exist for a reason. Usually ethics. And the program in this book is not ethical. Get those kids a therapist. Please. 

At least it was a very quick read. That way I didn’t have to push myself for too long. At the same time I think could’ve done with more fleshing out. Give the characters more moments to really create that “found family”. Give us more of that mystery, more details.