To me, this book is like the Gilmore Girls. A lot of people raved about it but I scoffed but realised I can't dislike something without watching it. So, I struggle through the first two episodes/first few pages and hate what I'm watching/reading and then something weird happens. 
 I get sucked in. 
 That's how I'm up to season five on Gilmore Girls and how I finished this book. 
 There's definitely an interesting premise here but I feel it gets very bogged down with unnecessary flowery language and unneeded back-story. I understand why there is a lot of stuff about her mother and her friend, Connie. I know it's there to show Evie's isolation and how easy it was for her to get caught up in the cult but it dragged on for far too long. 
 It's not until we're nineteen percent in that we meet one of the girls, Suzanne, but then it's not until twenty-seven percent (!!!) that we meet the other girls and see the cult. To me, personally, that's far too long to wait to get to the main storyline. 
 Once you start getting sucked in you're quickly thrown out by being thrown back into the present day. I found the worst instance of this was at thirty-seven percent because it was the first one and also because it seemed like the story was finally getting somewhere. 
 There's another throw back to present day at seventy-two percent and it's made even worse by the characters in the present day. Julian is probably the most irritating character I've ever read. I will admit that I did start skimming a little bit when he was on the page because he was a dick. 
 I feel like he's meant to be a mirror of Russell and Sasha is meant to be Evie but I could be totally wrong. I just can't think of another reason the present day scenes are needed. 
 It could be just me but I did find that there was a lot of telling instead of showing. Normally I could shrug that off but it just seemed to happen a lot of the time. Another thing I couldn't shrug off was some of the writing itself, it seemed like unnecessary purple prose when simple language would've been okay. Plus the scene breaks, my God, the scene breaks were irritating. Sometimes they'd only be two sentences before there was yet another scene break. 
 Personally, I found the ending weak but I can't put my finger on why. 
 Overall, I'm glad I carried on because I hate not finishing books. It sucked me in but by the end of the book I felt like nothing had happened? It really is a shame because I think there may have been a chance for a really good story here. 
 This review can also be found at: FadedTulips