Late to the Game

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bekahlee10 Avatar

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Melissa de la Cruz is a competent writer, I will give her that. Her work flows well and she paints a good picture of her scenes without overly describing every little detail. She is enjoyable to read and I can see why she is the popular YA author that she is. But where this book and its author lose me is in an apparent lack of imagination in the story department. Don't get me wrong, the idea of privileged people getting in trouble and their seemingly charmed lives being scrutinized is always an interesting one. But because of this, it's a story that has been done a hundred, if not a thousand, times before. With books like "They Wish They Were Us" and "One of Us Is Lying", this is a subgenre that has seen a boost in popularity among YA readers in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, that means that what would otherwise be an intriguing and gripping novel from de la Cruz is now so much white noise among other similar titles. This is to say nothing of the fact that she also chooses to utilize the framing device of a podcast in order to dump a massive amount of exposition on the reader, another trope that was once unique and innovative, but now comes off as redundant. It serves only to draw comparisons between this book and all the others on the market that do the same thing, sometimes to far better effect. Between her start with vampire fiction and this entry in her bibliography, in my mind, Melissa de la Cruz's obvious literary talent is being sadly overshadowed by her apparent reliance on trends, which she unfortunately seems to cash in on a few steps behind everyone else.