The plot, the writing, the references - all cringe worthy and embarrassingly poor. Throughout the book you keep hearing of all their name brand clothes, their expensive cars, watches and houses and it adds nothing to the story. This book is also a thinly veiled ad for Colleen Hoover books (ew) and the author is clearly a fan of Taylor Swift as well so if you don't know or don't care about her and Travis, you'll also cringe at the descriptions. This book was marketed to me as a whodunnit thriller but it was nothing of the sort. The widower barely had any relevance to the mystery of the story and it mostly felt like the author tried to fit in as many unnecessary details as possible, probably to confuse the reader, but it ended up feeling unfinished to me. Sure, I didn't guess the ending, because who would've guessed that a character we hadn't even met would be the big bad for no reason other than her mom is annoying? And that was just the villain for part of the story at the very end. The other "villains" were revealed in the epilogue and their collusion wasn't explained. How did they know each other well enough to even consider planning this dumb plot? The characters are just plain odd. They all act insanely irrational and the dialogue is baffling. There is no sense in how they talk to each other or how they react to each other's statements and actions. Why is the main character so afraid to say almost anything to her so-called "best friend"? They seem to hate each other from the very beginning and there's nothing but animosity between them, yet they claim to be the bestest of friends. Also, you would think if you accidentally killed your best friends husband you'd have some sort of lasting trauma or something? That was glossed over. How did the friendship survive that? What impact did it have on all the relationships in the story? How did that even come to be if that guy wasn't even a murderer to begin with? Why was he chasing his wife's best friend? And also, why did the main character's husband have a whole 19 year old kid that the wife never knew about until he showed up at their door? Why didn't that play a role at all? And did the cops just drop their suspicion towards the stepson? Idk because after the night with the Chinese food, nothing was ever explained again. How did the husband find out about the best friend and decide to murder her out of nowhere? Did he also find out about his own son or is he ignoring that part? What about everyone thinking that girl died but she was actually the murderer, what did the neighborhood think about that? The whole book is one of the worst books I've ever read/listened to and if I had paid for this I would've cried. Horrible, do not recommend.

I listened to the audiobook version of this and from what I hear, that was a wise decision as my friends have said it's a bit tough to get through otherwise.

To me, the plot caught my interest immediately and I overall really enjoyed the book! However, it did at times feel a bit hand-holdey in some of the themes that were discussed throughout. I do wish Kuang had had more faith in her readers' ability to read between the lines rather than having most everything spelled out – it took me out of the story at times.

I absolutely adore the characters, though! I felt so strongly about all of them as soon as they were introduced. The development of certain characters was shocking, but not surprising and I think I genuinely grew to hate some of them (iykyk). It was to the point where I had to stop listening and take a breather because they pissed me off so badly I physically felt it lol. That is exactly what I'm looking for in books, so it was perfectly painful.

Lastly, the ending did leave me a bit unsatisfied, but I do think that was on purpose. That doesn't really help, though, because I am the type of person to want to know everything about everything and once I'm attached to a universe, I would prefer it if it never ended and I could explore it for years and years (think Game of Thrones universe). I have my own theories as to what ended up happening but I would've liked to have it included in the story.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone with the slightest bit of interest in politics, colonialism, social commentary or etymology!