*sigh* 
 I don't know what I was expecting but it was more than that. I don't even know how to summarize the story because I'm still not sure what was going on now that I finished it. 
 Anouk (sassy, angry girl) and cohorts get stuck underground in this creepy, weird, ancient Paris castle thing underground. Creep shit ensues. Yeah. 
 The Good: 
 Though she has a ton of faults, Anouk is a smart and capable lead. She's quick on her feet and doesn't take shit from anyone. She was a more bearable character once the plot got rolling. 
 The setting is eerie. I was very creeped out, especially in the beginning. Bachmann does a good job of building a fast paced action sequence. Every room in that castle is built to kill, and the characters they encounter are creepy AF. For example, several times Anouk would turn and a character would just be hanging out in a corner staring at them. That's a huge phobia of mine so consider me completely freaked out whenever that happened. 
 The basic premise is good? I have a lot of issues with the execution but I still think the original idea was interesting. 
 The Bad: 
 Anouk annoyed me consistently throughout the book. In the beginning, she's antagonistic to everyone she encounters but gets offended when the others don't include her in things. I don't mind having a protagonist who doesn't give a shit about people. Fine. Cool. But if you're going to have this be a defining part of her character, don't turn around and show that she actually cares about people. At that point, I'm annoyed because this is a changeable part of her personality if it really bugs her that much versus having a character that genuinely doesn't give a shit. Pick one. She cares or she doesn't. 
 Plus, her back story? Come on. Not only is it predictable and overused, parts of it are unbelievable. 
 (view spoiler)[ She, a six year old, and a baby, get hit by a FOOD TRUCK, and Anouk comes out with four broken bones in her arm? No. Bullshit. If a kid and a baby get hit by a FOOD TRUCK, they are going to come out with intensive, life threatening injuries, if not death. Also, how the fuck does a baby fly 14 feet out of a 6 year old's arms? That makes absolutely no sense. None. (hide spoiler)] 
 Anouk is supposedly SO SMART but there were also times where she made these really dumb statements or decisions. For example, she's fluent in a ton of languages, including French. Any reasonably intelligent person would start speaking in French if someone was yelling at them in French. Anouk keeps yelling at them in English until another character reminds her that she can speak French. 
 Then at another point, a secondary character is having a rare moment of intelligence, and Anouk goes, "I blinked. That was a lot of sentences at once." 
 *face palm* 
 The cast of characters is incredibly imbalanced. Anouk is the only character who actually thinks and acts in a semi-intelligent way. Everyone else is walking around like their heads are detached. These are supposed to be intelligent teenagers. But again and again, Anouk is dragging all of their asses through lethal situations or explaining something or pointing out how they are wrong. It makes the other characters feel flat and unnecessary even with the background information we get from them. The point was probably for them to bring out the "human" side of Anouk but there isn't enough substance to them to justify that. They felt like filler characters. 
 Bachmann doesn't reveal any information until the last 60 pages of the book. He makes us wade through almost 400 pages of running and awkward conversations before he starts explaining ANYTHING. By the time I got to that point, I was so annoyed that I didn't actually care what the explanation was. Then I became more annoyed that the explanation was so anti-climatic and predictable. 
 That last page. Goodness. I'm going to quote the very last lines in the spoilers. It doesn't spoil the ending; it's a very generic group of lines. It's just awful. 
 (view spoiler)[ "But humans have another special talent: We can be happy almost anywhere, too. We can be happy because we're not alone. (hide spoiler)] 
 WHO APPROVED THAT? WHY WOULD YOU EVER APPROVE THAT AS THE LAST LINE OF THIS MONSTROSITY? I'M LITERALLY CHOKING ON THE CHEESINESS. 
 Ugh. 
 2/5 stars.