Perfect for those who love dark, unexpected twists. Keeps you engaged and is so well written! The setting of the story is a perfect backdrop for the creepy and weird. It allows the reader to feel connected to the overall vibe presented.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ebook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In the end , I liked this book. It took quite a while for it to come around and many of the confusion I found in the beginning to become more clear. It started out really rough and I often found myself lost in character conversations... not really understanding what in the heck they were talking about. I feel that in trying to keep the twists and mysteries of the story a secret , the author didn't give us enough to keep our attention.
I did push through to the end , as the story picked up quickly once I understood all of the characters and what the point of the story was. Overall I liked the idea of the story... a new boy in town meets a girl (our MC), as their relationship develops murders are occuring in their small town called "the Sham". Who is guilty? It takes reading to the end for the facts to become clear.
Recommended for fans of YA mystery.

I really wanted to like this story. I found it hard to follow and get into. I found it hard to relate to the characters.

Jesus.

Abandoning this at 6% for many, many reasons.

- lots of random italics
- lots of Random Things with capital letters for no reason
- the word ‘bloody’ used about 80,000,000 times
- four girls called Kitty, Cath, Becky and Rebecca... How are you meant to tell anyone apart?
- so many fragmented sentences that it’s hard to figure out what’s going on
- a lack of clarity in the timeline “you’re new here, welcome to town... but we’ve already been avoiding each other all term and it’s Christmas!!!”
- some truly dreadful metaphors
- child abuse
- animal abuse

Avoid.

This book is okay. I had a hard time finishing though because I always get distracted while reading the book.

The Sham starts immediately gruesome with some of the worst bullying I've encountered in books. However, what exactly it added to the story, I'm not quite sure. Emily meets Jack, a mysterious guy who might not be who he claims to be. At the same time, girls start to go missing. What is Jack's role in this? And worse, is Emily next?

This was such a strange novel. There were a lot of situations that felt off, and I couldn't get why she was so protective of Jack, even though she didn't know him and all these strange things were going on. I had a hard time caring for any of the characters really. Also, the ending was a surprise to me, but it didn't make much sense.

It was not for me, I'm afraid.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Eighteen-year-old Emily Heath would love to leave her dead-end town, known locally as "The Sham", with her boyfriend, Jack, but he's very, very sick; his body is failing and his brain is shutting down. He's also in hiding, under suspicion of murder. Six months' ago, strange signs were painted across town in a dialect no one has spoken for decades and one of Emily's classmates washed up in the local floods.
Emily has never trusted her instincts and now they're pulling her towards Jack, who the police think is a sham himself, someone else entirely. As the town wakes to discover new signs plastered across its walls, Emily must decide who and what she trusts, and fast: local vigilantes are hunting Jack; the floods, the police, and her parents are blocking her path; and the town doesn't need another dead body.

Well, it has a nice cover...

Everything beyond that was dreadful.

From the opening scene of a bunch of teen girls bullying an autistic boy (which would have made me stop right there if it wasn't a review copy), to ridiculous decisions Emily makes regarding Jack, this was all of my worst nightmares in one novel.

Worse still, the plot was a shambles of random happenings that made no sense either at the moment, or in the longer view. It was a mess. And that was being pretty polite.

I don't like to leave one star reviews - I feel like I should be able to find one redeeming feature in any book.

I couldn't.


Paul
ARH

The torture scene at the beginning of this novel was completely abhorrent and seemed to serve no purpose other than to demonstrate how awful these girls are and I really felt like this could have been achieved in a way that did not bring me such an extreme level of rage.

There was little to no explanation at all to why these girls are the way that they are or to give them any kind of character motivations at all.

The romance in this was very insta-lovey and made no real sense at all.

I found the writing to be extremely disjointed and overall weird and I personally didn't enjoy it and couldn't connect to it.

Unfortunately, this book was just a big miss for me.