Joined in 2023 
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Even though the characters don't have a personality I did get attached to them eventually, but not really to Kelly tho. Those names were some of the most unoriginal names that I have ever heard. I really liked Réiltín, Suze, and Tadhg...but what were the rest of those names? LB's real name sounded like the name of the protagonist of a bad Wattpad fanfic. The whole story felt like a badly written gacha story, if I must be honest. It was so anticlimactic and the names made the whole ordeal even worse. They were either so incredibly basic or so funny that it was bad.
The setting was interesting, I guess; Irish language summer school. But the plot was nothing more than characters pottering about having mindless conversations while you were waiting for one of them to hurry up and die already - which didn't actually happen for the longest time! The characters’ appearances weren’t even described at the beginning so I had no clue what they looked like, throughout the whole book I was just making stuff up in my head You know when the teacher is like "Let's all say something good about our classmates!" But you highkey hate everyone and can't think of anything to say? That's how I feel about this book. It was shit. I'm not going to sugar-coat it.
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I will say, however, if you’re in a reading slump - give this book a go. It’s easy enough to follow along to apart from when it isn’t (like that epilogue???) and it’s a relatively short book with big writing print so you can fly through it. (Not literally, unless you are Leia in Star Wars- like what was that about?) One of the group ends up dead by the closing stages of the book. We know this in advance, but there’s seemingly little preparation for this stage. We’re given minimal information about the characters that could explain these later events, and some of the potential interest is glossed over. WHERE THE FREAK DID I GET CASEY FROM? ITS WRITTEN BY ALEXIA MASON? DID CASEY WRITE ONE OF US IS LYING? Loved the grammar in that one (sarcastic). The prologue is just one big giant mess that I decided to ignore. It was so childish and it wasn't needed at all because...guess what?! We don't read about them walking down once Kelly dies! The prologue could have worked better. The shape it created was a mess, as well. Some of the death flags made me so terrified for the characters, but that was useless. Kelly was the one to die. Her death was so satisfying, but the failed symbolism made me upset. Also, what was up with the asylum stuff? Did it mean anything in the end? Everything just felt a bit pointless.
I understand that this book was set in an Irish school setting. I understand this book had a million different characters and I also understand the authors intentions of this book. But did it work? No. I didn't understand one bit. I liked the involvement everyone had in Kelly's murder, but what the hell was that last line? I am so confused that I'm not sure what to say. I liked the fact that Suze was in the "laundry room" this whole time. I liked Suze as a character, but I wish she was explored more; I found her very interesting. Another twist that I liked is in the epilogue. Can't believe I liked something from the epilogue! I enjoyed the use of the repetition to explain how everyone was involved in Kelly's murder. It worked okay. I really liked the fact that they were all guilty, in some way. Other than those two twists, I didn't quite enjoy the rest. Especially the asylum thing, since it wasn't a huge deal in the end. There was a vague attempt at foreshadowing but it was so brief and so subtle you'd blink and miss it. It was not nearly enough - where were our breadcrumbs to follow?By the closing stages we had moved into a setting that made it clear we were going to see the death. However, by this stage I could have quite happily seen any of the characters in this position and not been concerned, and the actual description of the death was so choppily done that it felt like a ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ moment. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher Simon & Schuster for allowing me early access in exchange if an honest review. This was the same with the freaking setting, they’re supposed to be in a old Irish building that was meant to be an asylum, yet the author described it in such little detail that I was doing most of the imagining that it got tiring thinking what everything and everyone looked like
Sixteen-year-old Joan Chang-Hunt discovers she’s a “monster”, a member of one of the 12 great families of London with particular powers, including the capacity to steal time from humans. And that cute boy, incidentally, is out to kill her – he is the legendary “hero” determined to and prophesied to put an end to all of Joan’s kind. The plot moves swiftly and neatly, as one would expect from this author (Mason is another pen name for crime writer Alex Barclay). But the characterisation feels thin, and this significantly lessens the impact of the dramatic events on the reader. Also I told myself I’d be productive today as it’s the first day off for Easter (WE GET TWO WEEKS 🥳) but literally all I’ve done is shower (which is basic hygiene, come on Alice) and start Caraval which is class so far. Not that you asked (Whoever “you” are). I don't want to keep harping on but, basically, this book needs major work. I can see it's already garnered a very low average score on Goodreads and I can see why. It's simply not ready for public consumption yet. It has zero suspense, zero thrills, 2D characters and hardly any plot. It reads like a bad first draft. For me it wasn't always clear when you changed povs or it was sudden. It also didn't help that the writing style for every character was the exact same.I mean you may as well give it a go, to the nobody that’s reading this that hasn’t already read it (Olivia has) soooo…. I guess that’s me. I liked the Irish setting and as a British reader that was very interesting. I thought that the way the characters are bought together by staying at a summer camp to learn Irish was very skillful and again, as a British reader, that is something I haven't had the experience of. The action - and I use this term loosely - centres on a group of teens who are sent to a summer school in an old asylum to cram for their upcoming Irish exam. For the majority of the book they go to lessons and wander round this building, hinting at tension between characters but giving us little. And speaking of the characters, they were little more than vague outlines; each one's voice sounding exactly like any of the others. Since we didn't have a main character to bond with it was vital we had a diverse bunch of interesting characters in the ensemble, but this couldn't have been further from the truth. It is interesting how this book is not written from multiple perspectives but does still change the viewpoint. It got slightly confusing in places but once I was used to it switching it was fine!
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