2.5
I didn't hate this book, per se. In fact, there were moments when I really enjoyed this book, and more than a few lines made me laugh. I distinctly remember highlighting something and commenting that it was the funniest line in literature. Also, Bishop was literally a dream for most of the book. Was he flawed? Absolutely. But he was so damn likable and brave and just downright cool. If you choose to read the rest of this review, you may get the impression that I didn't like the book at all. Honestly, I was close to DNFing it quite a few times, even when I was more than 200 pages in. Let me be clear, I liked the book enough to finish it, so that's better than I can say for a lot of books... but there's a reason my highlights and notes are hidden.

These are my main issues: inconsistent, illogical, immature, and otherwise boring characters; jerky pacing; and subpar treatment of trauma and (I mean this with all the love in my heart) attempts at poetic language that are giving high school theater kid diary.

First, full disclosure, I picked this up as a standalone, so perhaps if I had read it as part of the series then I would have had more background for the characters. However, this was advertised as a standalone, so the characters should be fleshed out enough that they don't need other books. There are about two characters that have a consistent characterization throughout the book: one, a villain, and the other, a side character whose point is to hate Bishop. Abri is constantly contradicting herself about her motivations, desires, and goals are and have been. Bishop was almost a perfect character until near the end when his characterization takes a sharp left turn off a cliff; up until then, though, I was screaming that Abri didn't deserve him every five minutes because she was acting so goddamn immature. Abri treats Bishop like she's fifteen and stupid—scratch that, she treats everyone and everything that way, for the most part. When I wasn't screaming, I was skimming; Abri, especially, was just... boring, most of the time. Her mental health issues weren't very believable to make up for her lack of balls so she just seemed foolish. Bishop was brave (until the end) and Abri threw fits. I wouldn't want to be friends with her.

Second, the pacing was a bit awkward. Not to contradict everyone else in the reviews, but I thought the first third or so was delightfully paced. While the big secret was handled a bit awkwardly, it didn't ruin that part for me. BUT. The middle third of the book was so unbelievably boring, at times. Let me sum up that part of the plot for you: Abri whines and victimizes herself for the dumbest things while everyone else acts a bit stupid, other than Bishop, all set in the same environment. After that, while the characters continue to be foolish, (*cough* everything surrounding Geppet *cough*), the pacing speeds up again but stalls for unnecessary conversations and stupid people activities. Then, the last 20% of the book is agonizingly slow with a lot of unnecessary angst and, again, stupidity.

Finally, all of the trauma, angst, and deep moments were absolutely fumbled. Abri's past could have been such a powerful piece of her character, but her psyche was severely underexplored and when we did get a glimpse, it was usually her victimizing herself about the dumbest shit (e.g., someone installing a security system with *gasp* BUTTONS!! So many!). Additionally, the schmaltzy vibe of the plot also seeped into the writing. Listen, everyone has a different writing style and I don't have to like everything about every style and no author should worry about pleasing everyone. My criticism in this area, as well as every other piece of this review, can be tossed out wholesale because, at the end of the day, this is my opinion. But here's the deal: it felt like we were missing either an editor or we had an editor who was unwilling to cut out unnecessary words and suggest wording changes. I can think of at least two places right off the top of my head where what was almost a powerful moment was ruined by overly dramatic and fanciful wording. More often than not, our attempts at grandiose writing come across as childish at best. Simplicity is so powerful. Waxing poetic can be dangerous. For me, we crossed that line a lot. Some sentences were genuinely hard to understand (action sentences!) and some word choices were incorrect both colloquially and in a dictionary.

At the end of the day, like I said before, this is just my opinion. I've never published a book and I'm not the one who put countless hours of hard work into producing this one. This is just one not-so-positive review among so many extremely positive reviews. Just because I didn't like it very much doesn't mean you won't.