I'll start by writing one paragraph about how I couldn't relate to this book, and then never mention that aspect of it again until the very end. 
 I had a pretty boring time in high school. I spent basically all of it sitting around near the Band Room reading or talking about video games, and the social interactions I had were, for the most part, not what one would call complex. There was little drama to speak of, and rebellion, rule-breaking, and concerns about social status were nowhere to be found. This book, about a high school cheerleading squad, is rife with the drama, drugs, debauchery, and deception that is all too common in the media, yet all too foreign to me. The kinds of thoughts and interactions these characters have are identifiable as coming from high schoolers, as they are laced with the thrill of autonomy and self-absorption, but deal with completely alien concerns. While I had these similar sentiments, they were mostly channeled toward staying home, playing video games, and working at libraries. This mismatch in experiences made the first half of the book, littered with stories and observations of the 4 D's mentioned above but lacking a real plot element to motivate or lead to them, completely foreign and utterly uninteresting to me. The complete lack of connections from which I could draw impeded my enjoyment of this book, and is really my main criticism of it. 
 That aside, it eventually turned into an engaging story about power struggles and the power of secrets, a well-traveled theme at this point but well-executed here, and had me reading at what seemed like a record pace by the end. Not too much actually happens in this book. There are a few key events, but much of the book itself involves the characters either processing what has happened or using the event to their advantage. This introspection, which is a flaw in the first half when there really isn't that much to think about, shines brightly in the second, when events actually occur and lives actually change. The transformations in the characters as well as the pointed dialogue and descriptions in these later sections give the book an infectious liveness. 
 The main character, Addy Hanlon, is an interesting narrator because she is surrounded by strong personalities, being the one caught in the middle of the central power struggle, but is so self-absorbed that these people and their actions only seem to matter as far as they affect her. This is not a criticism: her ability to pull the narration toward herself gives her character a unique power, and was really a highlight of the novel. 
 Abbott's writing was, for the most part, evocative and effective, replete with the kinds of strained metaphors and figures of speech one might expect from a teenage narrator that in other situations would be hard to take but here work to give the dialogue some realism. One thing I did find annoying, however, were the overdramatic sentences that seemed to close every single section of the book. Sure, they develop Addy's egotism, but some of them were just too cheesy and a bit painful to read. 
 This isn't a book you learn from. The characters all have their own problems, and they don't really grow. In that way, it's a lot like Gone Girl, the reason why I picked this up in the first place. The darkness of the characters is compelling, just like in Gone Girl, and bad things just... Happen. What set this book apart was really the revelation of the story. Though the ultimate ending is somewhat predictable and telegraphed, watching it play out is very compelling, and well worth the price of admission. 
 If this book had a trimmer first half, I think I would've liked it quite a lot. As is, while I loved it more and more as I kept reading, the lack of any kind of personal connection and the resulting dullness of the first half left it falling a bit short. However, I did like this book a good deal, and it was definitely good enough for me to keep reading Abbott's works. I'm very curious about how her style translates to other genres, and I look forward to finding out.