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I wasn't even able to finish Eliza Clark's debut, Boy Parts, so color me surprised when my interest was piqued when her sophomore novel hit NetGalley. Here's an example of when I'm glad to have given an author another chance. This book isn't perfect by any means, I'll discuss that in a bit, but it's leaps and bounds better than her debut, in my opinion.

"At around 4:30 a.m., on 23 June 2016, sixteen year old Joan Wilson was doused in petrol and set on fire after enduring several hours of torture in a small beach chalet. Her assailants were three other teenage girls - all four girls attended the same high school."

Wow, right? I couldn't wait to dig into the nitty gritty details of how things went so wrong for these young women and I was not disappointed.

A disgraced journalist decides he wants to tell this story after hearing about it on a podcast. He heads to Crow-on-sea where he interviews family members of the victim and perpetrators, as well as other friends of the girls. He does a deep dive into the girls social media presence to try to really get a grip on the state of minds these young women had leading up to this heinous crime.

So this book is actually a fictional story parading around like a true crime novel and I kind of love it for that.

But, it wasn't all roses. There were a few things I could have lived without.

My first and biggest complaint is that this book is much too long. Too much time was given to the towns history. I don't care about what Viking discovered it or how it got it's name.

The social media posts were much too many. While I understand how important social media is to our youth today, and how it allows us a glimpse into the girls minds and thoughts, I think these could have been scaled back a bit. All the acronyms and slang for a dinosaur like myself made these very tedious to read.

All the talk about pocket hells and magic are not my personal preference so I would skim these scenes when the girls would drone on and on about it. Again, I realize this is setting the tone and showing how truly messed up these young ladies were but...whatever, I didn't enjoy it.

So with a few minor tweaks this could really be sensational and the pacing would improve tremendously.

The ending to this novel will be divisive among readers but I actually thought it was really well done.

So there were some hits and some misses but in the end I am glad to have taken this twisted journey to the truth....or is it true? You be the judge. 3.5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for my complimentary copy.