Weird and disappointing

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Thanks to BookishFirst and Underlined for a print ARC of this book! Release date - July 9, 2019

Honestly I don't even know where to start with this book. I was really excited about it when I first started reading it, especially because I had won it. But I quickly realized this was not the book for me. It was very vague and confusing, with major plot developments contradicting things that happened earlier. I felt confused the whole time I was reading it, and while there are some answers towards the end, a lot of things are left vague and unanswered. I also mostly felt like the book had no point. Like I know I read a whole book but thinking back on it I can't come up with a whole lot of things that happened. It was just a bunch of nothing. This was supposed to be like a creepy "horror" book, but besides one or two skin-crawling scenes, it was a lot of teenage bickering and the main character worrying and being horrible.

I did not care at all about the characters. The main character Hetty was selfish and everything she did was unreasonable and irritating. There was also no characterization between characters. Hetty talks about how close she is with Byatt and would do anything to rescue her, but we have to reason to believe her or feel that relationship because there's no backstory. And as I said, there's not much plot here. You'd think Byatt going missing would be enough but it doesn't happen until almost halfway in, and then Hetty and Reese do next to nothing to find her except worry and say "I'd do anything to get Byatt back."

I really liked the concept of this book and reading the description I still feel like it should have been a really cool and creepy book, but it fell seriously short to me, so much so that I was just ready for it to be over.