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What is this book trying to do? At least one thing too many, that's for sure. I debated giving it 2 stars but gave it 3 in large part because it at least is a book that understands teenagers and social media (in this case we get a whole lot of Tumblr) which you really don't see enough.

This is a novel but it presents itself as a piece of nonfiction. A true crime book. But not just that, a true crime book that was previously pulled from the shelves due to controversy but has now been republished with names changed even though parts of the book have been discredited or challenged. The author was cancelled (and not in an oh no cancel culture way but in an actually wiretapped the people he reported on so literally can't work as a journalist anymore kind of way) and clearly wants this book to bring him back into respectable circles. That is all a lot. And I'm not opposed to it. But it also means that the voice of this novel comes from a man who is truly insufferable and that you're already sick of the moment he appears. It is no fun to follow him as he investigates.

He is also a very bad writer. Which makes you wonder if this is purposeful bad writing or if Clark is the bad writer, a very tricky undertaking. This doesn't feel like any true crime book I've read or heard of. The crime itself--where three teenage girls killed another girl--he unfolds perpetrator by perpetrator, mostly through a single long interview with a parent or family member. There is no flair to the interviews, you read much better ones in magazines every day, they plod along as he asks bad questions and often pokes and prods his subjects. He then writes one chapter of "narrative" that is a fictional account of an incident he's heard described between these girls. It is harder and harder to continue knowing we will just keep having this structure over and over again. We will not get much insight into these girls, quite the opposite.

And this, truly, is the heart of the problem. Our fictional author is terrible at writing about teenage girls. He writes them all as caricatures. They are all mean and obsessive and damaged. They feel so over the top that it is hard to connect with them or understand them. Is this Clark's point? That the true crime industrial complex is turning real people into caricatures? I can't really say. Because there is no contrast here to show that he is wrong, there is just your own lack of connection.

You do see Clark, the Tumblr accuracy first of all. Fair warning there is much discussion of the shipping of school shooters, some deeply disturbing stuff even when presented as all fictional people and crimes as it is here. And there's an understanding of the fluidity of teenage girl groups, the way they can turn on each other and change shape that I absolutely do not believe a middle aged straight man could really understand. That is the paradox here: what is Clark and what is her fictional writer? What is good feels out of place and what is bad overwhelms, but which is which? There are very strong Heavenly Creatures vibes here, with the obsessiveness. Though this book starts with shock value, the details of the crime at the beginning are much harsher than they end up fully playing out at the end.

I can't really tell you what Clark wants to say, but I am pretty sure I would have liked this story more without all the lenses of remove, if it had simply been a novel without the narrative acrobatics.