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I love that this book made me question each of the characters and that it didn't give you all the answers, which just added to how chilling it was. I still don't know exactly what happened and who to blame. Or if there should be someone to blame! The character of Amber was probably my favourite. She likes reading tarot cards, in fact it becomes a little obsessive, she is anxious and as a whole just very believable. I would have liked to have seen Rupert's character developed more but LB had a great story line. Overall, this was a fantastic read. I love the fact that I had no idea who would die, no idea when they would die and no idea how until the end. It was only at 85% (I was reading on kindle!) through that I started piecing together what could happen. I got parts right but the rest I was well off! No one was interesting. I'm more interested in what my neighbour's cat is doing than the characters themselves.
It was so addicting to read and the chapters flew by. I found myself tearing through it and near finishing it in a day. I was left reeling at the end’ – NetGalley – Nicola, Reviewer 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. The characters weren’t bland, so to speak, (what the hell does so to speak mean - yk when you just know when to put a phrase into your sentence but the actual phrase just doesn’t make sense? No just me?)
About this book
Protagonist Ingrid straddles the space between these two camps, as a scholarship student secretly dating the son of a wealthy, influential senator. Joining his presidential campaign as her senior year internship, Ingrid draws the attention of the senator’s glamorous and principled political opponent, and begins to question the purpose of the power she so desperately craves.
This is only the beginning of a thrilling adventure that includes venturing into ancient times such as the 1990s (where “the Rachel haircut is a time marker”) and grappling with the seemingly immutable rules of an unfair world. Joan desperately wants to save her murdered family, even as she is told it’s impossible: “Every monster goes up against the timeline...Everyone tries to change something at some point.” 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 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 I’ve been calling this book a murder mystery when it’s really a thriller (oops!) but there is absolutely nothing thrilling about this book. 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.Actually. Not just me. Because the author - I forget their name, sorry! - kept writing random things leaving me incredibly confused as to what was going on. If that makes sense, which it probably doesn’t tbh (TBH OLIVIA!!) but like… yeah. which brings me on to this genre. this book is YA but reads like a children’s book. the voices were very young and not like any teenager I have experienced. I’m only twenty three so this isn’t a huge jump for me to say. Overall, my experience was awful -- but I liked some parts. I think the characters should have been developed further and that the murder should have happened way sooner. It was horrible that they did a timeskip right after that. In some way, however, it did work slightly. The book could be easily improved. I really don't have a character I'm rooting for and everyone is annoying. The story is so slow and nothing really happened, I'm extremely glad that I have this book done and over with. The characters were bland asf, the only character that wasn’t was Kelly, but Kelly was such an annoying bitchy character that I could’ve strangled her myself if I was in the story; LIKE SHE WAS SO ANNOYING AND RUDE TO ALL HER FRIENDS
It was so addicting to read and the chapters flew by. I found myself tearing through it and near finishing it in a day. I was left reeling at the end’' – NetGalley – Nicola, Reviewer
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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. 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. 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. 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. I thought he was going to have a bigger part in this. Based on the flashforward and the "dirty work", I thought that Johnny would have some involvement in Kelly's death. It seemed like he was kinda thrown to one side and forgotten about. I would definitely have made Johnny do something bigger. Maybe he could have tried to kill the others because Kelly's death ruined his reputation? I don't know. Anything else would have worked.
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! 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. 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. 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.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! Rupert was honestly the best part of this book. Every time he appeared, I knew I was in for a good time. He always stole the show and I happened to laugh at some of his jokes. What worked best for Rupert was his LGBT experience, however. Sometimes, he would say that he hated being gay and, as a member of the LGBT community, I could relate. I could feel the fear he felt in coming out to his dad. I really couldn't like Kelly after what she said about his dad and his heart, or whatever. She made me really mad and I genuinely would have done the same thing as Amber. Rupert was a fantastic character and pretty okay for LGBT representation. 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. 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. 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.
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