Official rating is 4.5* 
 I should probably say first that I put this in my murder-mystery and suspense-thriller shelves. I feel like I should say that while there is a mystery, there is not necessarily a murder (you are trying to figure out if there was a suicide vs. murder though) and while there are points that are quite suspenseful, I wouldn't necessarily say this is "thrilling" in nature. 
 I was very quickly drawn into the writing style of this book. It was easy to read and I would definitely read something by this author again because of their carefully chosen words and descriptions of people and places really helped me to visualize everything. With that said though, I felt there were a few spots that I lost interest in the story because a few spots felt a little weighed down in detail that didn't really matter in the plot of the story. This left me feeling like I couldn't quite give the book that final 1/2*. 
 I also really liked the characters in this book. Each character was very real. They were flawed which helped you relate to them a little more strongly throughout the story and the growth (especially for the main character, Scott) was very good and could be seen as something plausible. 
 Lastly, this had a good story line. There were a few parts where I felt the same way Scott did about his circumstances and some things were slightly predictable (although I would like to say, where the hell did it come from that Scott's wife wanted to take away visitation rights to their daughter? That felt very out of the blue... Scott had to have been screwing up a lot for her to jump to that. I didn't quite "buy" that part of the story). I felt exactly like Scott did at the end about the case - which one could maybe say left the reader feeling a bit underwhelmed by the conclusion, but I thought it worked in this case. 
 I liked seeing the pictures and news articles that Scott used. I thought that really added an interesting element to this story. I would love to read more books written by Marisha Pessl with perhaps this same aesthetic!