By Dana Mele

“Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she’s reinvented herself entirely. Now she’s a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl’s body is found in the lake, Kay’s carefully constructed life begins to topple. The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay’s finally backed into a corner, she’ll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make…not something that happened.” – Goodreads

This private boarding school thriller started out great – suspenseful and mysterious, with interesting, secretive characters and clues arising left and right – but the last two thirds very abruptly became slow, useless, and boring. It was like the book wasn’t going to be long enough, so the author added a bunch of dialogue debating “who did it” and overblown mental health/relationship stuff. I’m all for character arcs and relationship development, but while the plot is going on. It was as if the plot bits of the book and the characters bits had been separated into two acts.

The first third was amazing. The main character witnesses a death and has to follow a secret scavenger hunt and uncover clues as to who committed the murder. You get insights into her and her friends, their pasts, and you realize the main character herself has secrets kept even from the reader. But only about a third of the way through, she finishes the scavenger hunt and suddenly there’s nothing new or exciting happening. The plot dramatically slows, and it’s an eternal cycle of the main character being depressed, talking to someone about the mystery, and then not doing anything about it. By the end of the scavenger hunt I knew who the culprit was, so all the last two thirds of the book seemed to do was plunge the reader deeper into a hopeless and dark atmosphere that honestly upset me.

Again, captivating style up until part way through when everything just became depressing. The main character had a unique voice and the author did a great job of showing us the world through her eyes while still keeping her personal secrets inside. There were some beautiful lines, but everything was just drawn out.

Despite the large cast, there’s only about four actually important characters. Even these characters don’t have much personality other than the MC. Everyone’s lives seems to revolve around cheap, silly mean girl private school drama. The murder was so unrealistic for this reason – who becomes a killer and tries to get revenge because of harmless pranks? Also, every single character is gay in some way or assumed to be gay. Listen, I totally get a secular author trying to include LGBT+ representation. But this was highly unrealistic. Every single girl at this all-girls school was bi or lesbian. Even more unrealistic, none of the characters ever talked about their sexuality. They just made out with other girls.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to write a complete, in-depth review about this one because I just would not recommend it and I feel bad beating that dead horse. The lack of a strong plot or compelling narrative, the unrealistic characters and motivations, and the constant sexual tension between characters made this one a one star for me. Especially as a Christian, I would not want to subject you to the hopeless and dark atmosphere of the second act and the ridiculous amounts of deadly high school drama.