I don't even know where to start. It's been a long time since I've been this disappointed by a book.

A friend sent me a link the other day about how YA lit isn't really meant for young adults anymore and I feel like this book is a perfect example of that. I ended up tagging this as new adult because I would very much hesitate to hand this to one of my students or recommend this book to a young adult.

Over the last two books, Pip has gone through some shit and this book spends a lot of time examining that. And, in my opinion, it's too much time. This book drags on; to be honest, I ended up skipping/skimming a lot of this book because I just couldn't take it anymore. This book spends a lot of time spinning its wheels. Which, on one hand, mirrors Pip's emotional and mental state very well. But it also gets boring really quickly.

In addition to that, Pip never really deals with anything. She whines and fusses and does some other shady ass shit, but she never picks any healthy coping mechanisms. I totally get it: Pip has been though horrors and she clearly has PTSD. I just hope that the young readers who pick this book up realize that Pip's making very poor choices. And I'm not one of those people who believe that media needs to be policed and sanitized, but I would have appreciated trigger warnings before I started this read.

I don't want to get into too much because of spoilers, but I can't help but feel like Jackson could have written this book 500 other ways and all of those ways would have been better than the book we ended up with. I hated every decision that Pip made in this book. I just feel like so much in this book was unnecessary. I went into this book expecting danger and a mystery to solve. The book I got instead was some psychological thriller that really didn't match the first two novels in the series.

To be honest, I walked away more impressed with the quality of the media inserts (I was reading a digital ARC) then I was with the plot. And that right there tells you everything.

LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. I couldn't put this book down. The ending was fantastic. It was a great character arc and I loved how she grew as a protagonist in this novel. I would recommend this series to everyone!

Holly Jackson does it again with this third book in the series! A fun and quick read for YA readers alike! The mystery and story seemed to be well rounded out and characters are written amazingly!

Wow. This book went places I really didn't expect it to go. At the start of the book, I thought I figured out what was going to be a "twist" at the end, and by the time we got to where the twist should have been, it was clear I was very very wrong. It took a little bit for the action to pick up in this one, but overall, it was a solid read.

Man I don’t know if I loved for hated this book but I do know that I flew through it in one sitting. I think there were other ways to get to the ending with our jumping the shark. Over all I’d recommend the series to folks but this one wasn’t my favorite.

Wow! Clever and well-crafted. Tough to read when you’ve invested so much time and emotion with Pip and Ravi after three books. I think it is an honest recounting of how someone who has been wronged by the system over and over would react and I appreciate that the ending wasn’t “easy.” It was a white knuckle page turner the whole way through.

Well, shit. I am really in disbelief about the way this series ended up going.

So, after the events of book 2, Pip has PTSD. Majorly. It’s hard to watch a character we love go through that. She hears gunshots, feels blood on her hands, can’t sleep… just is dealing with tons of physical and mental effects of everything she experienced. She’s attempting to handle it herself and hiding her struggles from her loved ones. It’s really difficult to watch, because she is very loved and everyone would be more than willing to help. The way she’s acting and coping is realistic, but it’s just sad.

Essentially, someone has been harassing Pip on Twitter, via email, and it starts happening in person - things drawn on her sidewalk in chalk, dead pigeons left in her yard… she finds out that the one doing it is likely a serial killer who has been inactive - because someone is in jail for it, but it’s likely the wrong guy… and things escalate from there.

I just can’t believe the changes in Pip, fundamentally. I know she went through a lot and has valid massive distrust in the justice system after trying and failing to get their help in her past cases. But I don’t read the final book in a series that I love, usually, in order to see a beloved character go through pure hell. The END of this book literally made me cry of disappointment - like physically cry, I read the last page of this story and I physically cried. I just can’t believe the Pippa Fitz-Amobi that I’ve read about up to this point could sabotage herself to these points. This series is about a smart and inquisitive kid who keeps a decent attitude about things and doesn’t take no for an answer and book 3 takes all those traits about her, twists them, and uses them in such an odd way. I guess her actions are in character, but just character that has been pushed past a breaking point.

Ravi remains my one true light in this series, but even the stuff he does is just like… ? He and Pip have a really beautiful and strong relationship and it has never been a source of stress in the series. That does not change in this book. But it almost is too fixed of a trait in their relationship? Ravi is just down for anything Pip is down for and when Pip is going off the rails it pulls Ravi off the rails with her and it just… it isn’t really toxic because it’s from a place of love but it’s also kind of toxic just in the literal sense.

I don’t disagree with anything Pip did, is another confusing thing. The outcomes are rewarding to see. But just the fact that she had to do them is part of what’s so upsetting about this book. I just wanted better for her in this installment after book 2 and instead I ended up getting a whole lot worse for her. I’m trying so hard to avoid spoilers here, y’all, and I bet you’re so confused reading this.

I genuinely do not know that I would recommend this installment to fans of the series. That’s how wrong this story made me feel. I had a pit in my stomach after finishing. Ravi provides a little comic relief, as does Pip’s family, but mostly this is just a really dark and pretty graphic novel. I say go for it if you’re really interested, but just know that I personally would have been happier thinking the story ended with book 2.