This book...eh? 
 It was solidly enjoyable. It was intense. I appreciate the language. I like that it's an unreliable narrator lady protag. I like that everyone's an asshole. Scratch that. I like that everyone's an asshole, in theory. 
 There's a lot of stuff going in in theory that made me want to read this book as a sort of no-question fav. It was like Deathless, I was already sold and yet the content kept...slipping out of my hands. Or maybe I was evading it as much as I could, which is hard. 
 I'm trying to get to a point with this. 
 What I think my issue is is that this book is like having someone pull a gun to your head, your chest, your kneecap, and your genitals, and at a certain point you as a reader are like "fuck it, no matter what happens this isn't ending well" instead of "oh no, don't shoot my kneecap!" Everyone is vile and usually I'm cool with assholes in fiction. Honestly, I can see this book in the more capable hands of Gillian Flynn or Megan Abbott, and I would love the hell out of it. But a narrator so openly vile you need a deft hand, and I don't think Raeder was totally there. Not that she was at all hiding that Laney was a terrible person and an unreliable narrator, but there are a few points where I was thinking I had no reason to follow Laney's arc. What did Laney learn from this? Why does her story matter? 
 I also understand that Laney was mentally ill, which is passed off as part of her as a person, and not a disease but a predestined evil. Yes, mental illness is part of who she is, but Jesus, she is acting like she is better than her disease and it is also written in the stars for her to do these terrible things. 
 Also the focus of her revenge is ridiculous. Her pain is a tragic backstory where a guy in a frat hazing requirement literally ruins her life, and in a way that made him a super genius and kind of lost me immediately. And she goes after the alumni of the frat that assigned the task of ruining her life, instead of, you know, the guy who made the active choice to do this to someone. He could have said no, but he gets off very, very easy compared to the buildup that story gives us. 
 Laney's "saving grace" is also a romance I honestly...didn't dig. It had all the elements of an edgy romance I would have loved! I am so mad! And yet I could never get into it. All they did was quote poetry at each other and want to have sex. And all I wanted was a sexy female couple in one of these books, do you know how long I've looked forward to reading this? Ugh! Blythe drove me up the wall. She was a Manic Pixie Time Bomb. 
 The book had a very tumblr-photoset vibe to it. It was very pretty and broken but it didn't have the substance to carry. It reveled in no-meds-attached mental illness and kind of turned me off to the whole awfulness of the characters. Really turned me off. And there was a lot of sex in this book so it wasn't fun standing in the corner being turned off. 
 I guess may main issue is that the angst could not sustain itself. It was a party that wasn't a good time. It just wasn't fun and devious. She almost shoots up a school, for christ's sake, you kind of lose me when that's something a main character chooses to do. I didn't like sympathizing that sort of person. Everyone was too much of an asshole, and coming from me, that is saying something.