What a great thriller featuring extremely intelligent students in an exclusive prep school who are battling for the top. My students will love this!

I expected more from this, to be honest.

I saw this get a lot of attention on bookstagram, so I was very excited to get an ARC of it. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. Maybe I should've gone in with. no expectations, but after seeing it talked about so much, I couldn't help it. I'm not usually one for mystery books, so that might be part of the reason I didn't like it that much, but I was hoping this would get me more interested in the genre.

I loved the format of this book. The confessions at the beginning of each chapter added a lot to the story. I was also glad to have flashbacks, usually right after they were mentioned in the previous chapter.

I did enjoy the characters a lot. It was amazing to see a large cast of asian characters. I was also pleasantly
surprised to see some queer characters too. I liked seeing how the friend group interacted, especially in such a high stakes situation. I think that the characters were fairly well developed and their backstories were really interesting. I thought that they were also well written as teenagers. A lot of the time, teenagers are often written very stereotypically, but these ones were very accurate.

My main issue was that it just wasn't that exciting. The mystery just wasn't that... mysterious. It was also really confusing. The ending felt like it wasn't developed enough throughout the book for it to actually make sense. There wasn't really anything to look back on and find hints or foreshadowing to actually make sense of the resolution. The ending explanation felt like a bit of a cop out to me. As if it hadn't been explained it would've made no sense.

The "romance" in it also really bothered me. I was expecting it because it was in the TW's but I was still really creeped out by it. It was interesting to add to the storyline, but it I was not a fan. Maybe its because I'm only a year older than the MC and picturing myself in that situation makes me really uncomfortable. It was just super messed up. And the fact that it wasn't really shown as something super negative kind of bothered me. I feel like there should've been more of a clarification about the nature of the relationship and how it impacted the MC other than the actual repercussions from her school.

Overall, it was still a really quick read, and I did have a lot of fun.

Take ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and add about a ton of melodrama and you get ‘How We Fall Apart’ – aka one heck of a beach read!

The book does take it a step above the aforementioned franchises by adding commentary on Asian American culture and American class struggles. It makes things feel fresh and modern.

I had no clue who our ‘Proctor’ was and was shocked when I found out the who and why of everything.

I did find the melodrama a bit much – it even included the villain monologue scene in which a villain talks way too much and practically twirls their villainous mustache as they brag about what they’ve done. But, hey, it was entertaining as could be.

This is book one and I definitely want book 2! There’s a secret we haven’t been told yet and I want it to be one that destroys a certain smug someone!

*ARC via Net Galley

How We Fall Apart is marketed as Crazy Rich Asians meets One of Us is Lying, but I think it could more accurately be described as Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl meets my high school academic life. Or The Secret History. We follow Nancy Luo as she and her friends are implicated in their former friend’s murder as their life-shattering secrets are threatened to be exposed by a mysterious character via social media.

Nancy is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who worked thankless jobs in order to give their daughter a future. Like many Asian diaspora stories, the students of prestigious Sinclair Prep are expected to be the best academically, and then go on to become influential members of society. HWFA explores how these students cope with the pressure and the consequences of failure. Parts of this story really hit home to me, as I went to a magnet high school that was well-known for its academic expectations (though, without the murder and crime during my time there). Fellow children of immigrants should find the family aspect of the book incredibly relatable, as Nancy’s mother plays a large part in her motives.

The story is fast-paced, sometimes a little too fast for my liking. Other parts of Nancy’s friend group that gets threatened quickly have their secrets revealed, their consequences shown, and is hardly explored again after that. I wish we could’ve seen how these characters react to the changes over time instead of being treated as a one-time instance. During the course of the story, we learn about Nancy’s secret which, during the big reveal didn’t seem like such a big scandal to me. Overall, I thought these big bad secrets could have been more devastating.

The question of who murdered Jaime is present at all times, and the ending is quite explosive. I felt like the strongest point of the book was the character development the major characters go through rather than the plot, as the reveal was quite a stretch for me. I really enjoyed how Nancy presents herself at the end of the book and the decisions she made for herself as there have been points prior in the story when I was questioning her decisions. Initially I thought this would be a standalone, but Katie Zhao foreshadowed plot points that will lead into the sequel book. I’m quite excited to see what happens next with these characters in HWFA 2.

XOXO, Gossip Girl

Dark academia thriller :One of us lying meets famous Korean tv series Boys Over Flowers vibes with quiet fast pacing and riveting story and damaged, broken characters who did so many mistakes under pressure to survive at the competitive school circle! Aren’t you still sold?

The story takes place at Upper West Side , Sinclair Prep, an elite high school that ranked number one in every imaginable university entrance rates, debate championships, number of alumni who went on to become US presidents.

Jamie Ruan is top ranked junior, a privileged princess of Sinclair Prep who is a pretty perfectionist student, achieving any goal she’s designated. She can play dirty. She’s merciless against any obstacles on her way. And she always know how to get away with anything and do away with anyone.

She could ruin lives with a single whisper to her healthy influential father. But now her reputation is tarnished after her father’s imprisonment because of embezzling.

Our narrator Nancy Luo who is a child of immigrants came to pursue their American dream is a daughter of maid, got accepted to the school with full scholarship. She tries too hard to defeat Jamie to be valedictorian for pursuing her own dreams. It’s so obvious she can trade her arms and legs to take place on Jamie’s life. She suffers from inferiority complex, trying so hard to fit with wealthy family’s kids but she also thinks so little about her achievements. Especially her father’s return to China makes feel more abandoned and worthless.

Once upon she and her three best friends Akil, Alexander, Krystal were Jamie’s friends but after the incident they’ve been through two years ago and her father’s conviction, they got estranged and now Jamie’s missing.

And a secret hacker starts bombarding school network with texts asking them a simple question:
Jamie has four former friends . Each friends has a secret. One day Jamie goes missing, which friend is guilty and deserves punishment?
A) the one who sunk the lowest to get the highest
B)the one who ruined a girl three years ago
C)the one hiding a criminal
D)the one who traded conscience with grades
And a few days later they find the body of Jamie at an empty New York apartment. Authorities think it is murder case. So who killed Jamie Ruan? Instead of her four estranged friends, there are so many lives she’s ruined. So it could be anybody!

As you can see both Nancy and her friends keep so dark secrets. None of them is innocent including the victim. And they have to find the Proctor at first who sends those messages unless they want their secrets reveal. Because the things they hold themselves can ruin their entire futures they hardly worked for!

It’s a mind blowing, riveting page turner with a little Asian series vibes. The ending was a little far fetched with soap opera vibes. But I liked the final twist and the last conclusion.

Overall: it was entertaining mystery reading! I’m rounding up 3.5 stars to whodunnit, dirty little secrets, you can trust no one four stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

How we fell apart by Katie Zhao is a unapologetic tale about how immigrants and their kids have to suffer the consequences of dreaming the American dream. This story follows the lives of four kids who have deep dark secrets buried with them which are not threatening to surface. The death of their friend, their secrets getting leaked and the consequences of that put the characters through mental turmoil and force them to think about their relationships, friendship and the consequences of their doing.

I would have loved to read the chapters from all the four povs instead of just Nancy's. Since we see the story only through Nancy's eyes the other characters seem to fall flat and have no development.

This book shows the consequences of the American dream, the parental expectations and those line beautifully but for me the murder mystery part of the book fell very flat. The secrets revealed felt like they were supposed to be major but the characters had no realistic reaction to them. The pacing of the book was fast which stopped me from connecting with the characters properly. The pay off of finding out who the Proctor was not there.

But still, I extremely enjoyed reading this book and I cant wait for the sequel. Thank you for providing me the arc in exchange for an honest opinion.