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The one thought at the forefront of my mind as I finished this book was: "No way this is only 336 pages."

I liked the concept of this book. I'm not into the whole true crime thing, but I am interested in the psychology of our societal obsession with it. Plus, the opening was really gruesome and horrible, which, if I'm being honest, did get my attention. It just really didn't prepare me for what a drawn-out, slow read this is.

Penance tries to do a lot, to the point where I'm not even sure exactly what the author was trying to say here, what book she wanted to write. There is a massive cast of characters, loads of detail, loads of backstory-- most of which felt unnecessary, especially the parents' backstories --lots of teenagers being shitty to each other, speaking in Teenglish to the point I could barely stand to read the dialogue.

The narrator-- journalist Alec Z. Carelli --is pretty unreliable, not to mention unlikable, from the start. At this point, I am pretty tired of the unreliable narrator trope, especially when it is clear from the beginning and not a twist. The problem is that nothing they say matters to me because I can't be sure any of it is true... so why bother listening?

He also has a very dry, boring journalistic style. He's working with pretty good material here, but he drains every bit of enjoyment out of it by taking us on long interviews that are 90% pointless. To the author's credit, I do think the choices made in this book were intentional and were supposed to show how true crime journalists misrepresent real people for their stories, but god, it was a chore to get through.

It was a very slow, dense, hard-going read.