I liked the writing in this book better than The Silent Patient, but The Silent Patient had that ending and twist that was just so well done. This book has beautiful sentences and addresses grief in a realistic way and I liked that. This book has a picturesque setting on a college campus that is similar to that of Donna Tartt’s Secret History. The relationship between The Maidens and Edward Fosca is built up to be like the small group in that book as well, but that’s where the similarities end. Obviously, no book is going to be The Secret History and it’s my own fault that the cover and synopsis gave me false hope. I did love this setting, though. I didn’t like that the only character we really got to know well was Mariana. I wish we had gotten to know at least Edward a little bit better or Zoe or any of The Maidens. As a fan of Greek Mythology, I enjoyed the references to different stories and I especially loved the appearance of Theo Faber and how that scene gave us a sense of the time this took place since it was before he went to work at the Grove. I thought the second part of the book was stronger than the first half, but I didn’t really like the ending at all. I didn’t think it made sense and as I mentioned earlier, this could’ve been fixed if we had been able to get to know the other characters. I don’t want to say much more about that because of spoiler risks. I do want to give a trigger warning for an animal death. That part was hard to read and it is graphic. I’m sure this is going to be a popular summer book and I absolutely appreciate being able to read it early, but I just can’t say that I loved this book. It was fine and it was definitely readable and again, the setting- but parts of the plot just didn’t make sense to me and character development besides Mariana was needed in order for me to care about what happened to them. Also, therapists cannot see their supervisors professionally. It’s an ethical violation. I wish it weren’t, I would love to see mine! Maybe this is different in England? I don’t know and I haven’t researched it- but it’s not allowed in the United States.