Dnf @ 31%

I don't expect authors to be experts in psychology, medicine and sports. However, I do expect them to at least Google the information they put in their books.

The final nail in the coffin was the ice skating date. I used to be obsessed with figure skating and seeing someone write a hockey player do a lutz jump, when that's impossible with the types of skates hockey players wear, pains me. I tried to forget about it and just read, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I gave it a fair chance and read two more chapters, but nothing that has happened convinced me that this book is worth continuing.

(Another moment that had me rolling my eyes is the main character doing "research" for her assignment and it's the most basic information that google ai assistant would give you. Like no nuance, no information that would even remotely sound like its from a textbook.)

As for the plot, it became so monotonous that every "scare" feels so cheap. 100 pages and all the ghost does is turning a desk lamp on and watching Scream (remake). No, Im not joking -he repeatedly turns on the TV and plays Scream.

Im not even curious what happenes next.

I don't understand what the point of this book was. For over 300 pages we follow the most insufferable main character -Anna who is obsessed with her equally insufferable friend Willow. Anna has no sense of her own identity outside of her weird relationship with Willow. She's jealous. She does everything to be the most important person in her friend's life; changes her appearance, gives up on her own plans and dreams and even lets Willow downright traumatize her. And when that doesn't work she makes plans for someone to mug Willow with a knife to make her realize she needs her. Except that doesn't work, because it's 9/11 and Willow disappears.

With that wild premise you'd think this book would be more interesting than it was. In reality nothing really happens. We get flashbacks to the women's past, how their met, how Anna's obsession grew, and we get current events where Anna frantically runs around trying to find Willow. And all of that was boring.

I don't get why this was set during 9/11, the story had nothing to do with that and that's a weird way to use people's tragedy as a background to your book. I think the author was insensitive towards mental illnesses at times. Especially when there was a weird part when Willow's father blamed some of the things she did on hypomania. I think it plays into the stereotype that people with bipolar disorder are horrible people... There was also some alluding to Anna having ED that only got addressed when there was food present and she thought "I don't need to eat! I can live on art".

Overall, I didn't have a good time reading this book. Terrible characters and lackluster plot made me wish I had dnfed it, instead of forcing myself to finish. There was some attempts at commentary on how women are treated in the art world, but I think using characters whose main traits were hating on another woman and harming her, didn't really sell that message.