I will admit that I loved this book but I'll also admit that although it was typical Shepard fare, at times it would have passages that sort of dragged. 
 Let me start off with the good. This book was a very addictive read that I just wasn't able to put down and as such, I was able to finish it in one night. The mystery of "who killed Sutton and why do they want Emma to act as her" is intriguing. It's fun to guess at who it could be as well as cultivate different theories about who is most likely to have done the crime and it's also fun to have those theories smashed to bits by little clues here and there. (I have one theory that so far I'm pretty convinced is pretty solid.) 
 The bad? Well, there's a few scenes that just sort of dragged. I don't really know how many times we need to have Emma and Ethan circle around each other, feel someone watching them, or have one of them suspect the same characters over and over. It gets a little tedious. Not overly so, but enough to where I can't help but feel that the book is deliberately treading water in order to lengthen the series as much as possible. Frankly put, this could have easily been melded into book one with very little worries about overly condensing anything because nothing big really happens. 
 That leads me to my biggest concern: that this is going to get the PLL treatment. This is not a series that needs to be stretched out into umpteen books and Never Have I Ever really gives the impression that the publisher is going to try to milk as many books as possible out of the storyline. It's this sort of treatment that kept this book from being as good as it could have been. This just felt a little too watered down. From any other author this wouldn't be that bad, but I've read Shepard before and I know she can do better than this.