Well. Well. Well. This was a book I definitely had not foreseen enjoying as much as I did. I'm usually not really one for contemporaries/realistic fiction--I'm definitely more of a fantasy/supernatural/sci-fi kind of girl. And I'm definitely not usually sucked into worlds full of money and petty drama and problems. But dang, this book had me hooked. 
 Initially, I was getting a very 
 Fifty Shades of Grey 
 vibe, what with the promise of our main character being whisked away from a hard life of squeaking to get by to one of wealth and higher society and rich boys who were all a bit fucked up in their own ways. And from the talk of things, I thought there were going to be quite a few sex scenes. And there were--though not to the degree of most adult novels. This was very much straddling the border between YA and Adult; "New Adult" has never been a more fitting term. 
 But as fucked up the boys were in the beginning, and as petty as the initial drama was, the characters and their relationships evolved dramatically throughout the novel. There was some depth there; there were humans beneath the masks of arrogance, anger, and showiness. Despite what I felt were going to be cliche situations and character arcs, they were done in such a way that felt authentic. I'm not saying I could actual see this book happening in real life--the way everything lines up is still too neat to lend a perfect sense of realism--but the characters felt very real in their world. 
 I wrote on my first reading progress update that this book (and really, its characters as well) felt like "a car that keeps clipping road signs and bumpers but hasn't hit anything big enough to stop it yet." Initially, this was me trying to explain how tenuous I felt reading this book. I mentioned before I'm usually not one for this sort of stuff, so I knew something could make me drop it at any moment. But really, the characters each were the car. No one was free from problems or issues with their lives. Everyone was broken in some way, but there was still humanity there; there was still something keeping each of them from burning out completely. And I loved that. 
 Now, I will say that the ending is complete bullshit (pardon my French, but BS just doesn't do it justice). It was the worst possible place to end the book and very much reminded me of Fifty Shades of Grey in that a single scene in one chapter completely changes the characters' situations. But this ending was way worse. I heavily considered docking a star just for the ending, but I enjoyed the ride to it too much. All I can say is, have the sequel ready.