Hey, for a YA Contemporary with romance (with the occasional blood) this was a good book. For a YA horror/slasher… not so much.

This review will be chaotic, but dear Lord, I want to write a review right now. While I still very much pissed, while I am still so very much disappointed.

This was one of my MOST anticipated reads of this year. Really, when I heard that one of my most liked authors would be writing something totally different I just wanted to squee in happiness. I couldn’t wait to see how Stephanie Perkins would write Slasher/Horror books. I was curious, I wanted to know more.

But sadly, after a fantastic, creepy, OMG WHAT THE HELL, opening.. the rest of the book frankly just was boring and bland.

But hey, as I said, for a YA romance it was good. I just adored Ollie and Makani together. They are a cute couple, and I was rooting for them. And of course hoping it wouldn’t be Ollie who was the murderer. I loved how sweet Ollie was towards Makani, how caring he was. How he was there for her when she needed him.

It also didn’t help that we knew who the murderer was around midway. Yep. That sure killed even more of my happiness. I don’t want to know the murderer until the end.

The secret, the BIG GIANT secret that is so often hinted at that eventually I just was bored by it and how Makani never ever told anyone. We learn all about it around page 194, and it was so anticlimatic and so lame that I couldn’t even care. Plus I found it all so highly bullshit.
So she cut off her best friend’s hair after a gruelling initiation. Her best friend almost drowned. But apparently NO ONE gave a shit about that or the whole initiation and what happened there. Oh no. Apparently all they cared about was Makani who had the word Bitch on her head and the knife in her hand. Whut the actual hell is wrong with the world that someone get arrested, suspended, death threats and other things over something as cut hair. Why didn’t anyone care how this all came to be? Why didn’t anyone care to punish those seniors?

The murders? I expected people to drop left and right, but instead the murders didn’t happen that much, between the first and the second is 70 pages, between the second and the third are 50 pages. Between that? A little bit of fear, but yep, mostly romance. Whoop whoop.

After learning Makani’s secret I still had about 80 pages left, and those pages were the lowest. I just had to struggle so hard to get through the book. Plus with the murderer know…. it wasn’t even that scary any more, it was more a question of when would he hit again and if he would stay with his pattern or if he would just randomly go for things as cornered people would often do.

Plus Who the hell leaves their teenage daughter ALONE with their siblings when there is a murderer walking around town? I just found that so unbelievably stupid. Take those kids with you or just stay home. Really, this just stood out so much and I was face palming.

And oh yeah, sure, if you just bundled those murders and the parts together where the kids were terrified and trying to figure out what was going, it would have been a good book and true to the advertising/blurb. But now it just focused too much on the romance, too much on Ollie and Makani, too much on that secret. Well, I guess if you only took those scary/creepy/murder parts you wouldn’t hold much of a book. Maybe about 80-100 pages max. And high number is mostly because the last 60-ish pages were mainly about the murders. Yes, about 35% of this book. Also I really don’t have anything against romance, but if the book is promoted, advertised and made to seem as a horror/slasher, it shouldn’t be the focus. It shouldn’t be the main point.

So yeah, those last 60 (well ish) pages were OK, so bumping up my rating by 1, but the ending (well that last page) just plainly sucked. That is how it all ends? And I am dropping my rate by 0.5 stars. In the end I am rating this book 2 stars.

Very disappointed in this one. So very disappointed. 🙁 sighs

I may have missed some things, but as I said at the beginning I am still quite urgghhh about things, my head isn’t clear. But I think I got the main point across. I am not sure if I would recommend this book, though I would warn people who come here expecting a lot of gruesome stuff. There is some, but it is here and there, and then there is the last 60-ish pages.