This wasn't really a bad book, but unfortunately I saw the twist coming extremely early (as in about 10% in), which in a book that relies on said twist is a very frustrating thing.

The set-up is interesting, though I have a strange fondness for books set in psychiatric hospitals, and the characters themselves were well-drawn, though a bit prone to teenage drama and angst, even for characters in this situation. Occasionally our narrator would make a scene over something that seemed insanely minor to me in comparison to something she had just handled with nary a complaint, so the see-sawing in that regard was a bit frustrating. I felt like I had just the right combination of feelings about Alice for a thriller-type novel, and this might have been a hit with me if I had been wrong about the plot.

It's not a bad plot, don't get me wrong. It's well-told and goes back and forth between "now" and "before" in a way that I have always liked in my books, but the hints were way too heavy-handed for me and I guessed things way too early. Once I had guessed, there was not a single concern that I was wrong at any point, either: everything seemed to be pointing that way once I was looking for it. That's something that is very hard to forgive in a thriller, because it takes the thrill right out of it. I might simply be a bit jaded with the genre, admittedly--if you can't guess the ending, this is definitely an intriguing read.