I love The Outsiders, and I hoped to feel the same with this book, but I didn't. I did appreciate the author's attempt to do a female take on the story, but it was a miss for me. The overall writing was fine, but the pace was too slow and the storyline too predictable. There wasn't much depth to the characters, and that made it hard to truly connect with them or stay engaged. I thought there might be a bit of mystery to it, but there wasn't. I think there was a lot of potential to the twist on a wonderful classic, but I just felt that, overall, the book didn't live up to that potential. Maybe I was expecting too much. Perhaps readers who have never read The Outsiders or saw the movie would feel differently about this one, as they'd go into it without the expectations or urge to compare/contrast the two. I've never read anything else by this author, but I may check them out in the future.
Trigger warning: sexual assault
Trigger warning: sexual assault