3 stars
I received an ARC of this book through Epic Reads.
I will start by saying I have not read the first book. I won an advanced copy of the book, then found out it was the second in a series. The book backtracks a lot so I think I understand most of what happened in the first book. (I may at some point go back and read the first one, but right now I have a pile of ARCs and Little Free Lending Library books to get through so those are taking priority.)
Overall, this was an interesting book. Similar suspense/thriller book to series like Pretty Little Liars. The most interesting thing about this book is that the main character, Nikki Kill, has synesthesia, which for her means that she sees number, letters, words, and emotions are colors. Honestly, the fact that Brown was able to come up with so many descriptive colors was impressive. This phenomenon/skill helps Nikki as she tries to solve various mysteries in her very complicated life (who killed her mother? who is setting her up? where are Rigo and Luna hiding? what is her dad keeping from her? what is Detective Martinez keeping from her? – the list goes on and on).
The writing was good and fairly fast-paced. This is the kind of book that once you finish one chapter, you want to go right on to the next one. Good set up. It took me about a month to read because a) I thought it was a good idea to try to read The Big Short while reading this book, b) I was working on publishing my own first novel Heartstrings by McKenzie Richardson, and c) this is a monster of a book.
Having said that, I do think this book was longer than it needed to be. It’s almost 500 pages long and I think it could easily be cut down at least 100 pages. A lot of the time, Nikki gets stuck in her head and goes on and on about her crazy life. For the most part, I didn’t care about Nikki’s snarky inner dialogue. Just get on with solving the mysteries, lady.
On top of that, Nikki is not a very likable character. She seems like the kind of young adult who is selfish, arrogant, and sarcastic that you are supposed to immediately fall in love with despite her many flaws (as of course almost all the male characters do), but in reality she was just self-centered and annoying. Most of the time, I couldn’t figure out why she was being so rude and mean. I get it, you had a hard life, but geez you could be a little nicer to people. The world doesn’t revolve around you, even if you have a BA name like Nikki Kill.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It is definitely a page turner. It ends with a cliff-hanger, setting up the third book in the series. As I said before, I’ll probably read the first book at some point and may even go on to read the third book, but for now I (and my wrists) need a break from these massive tomes about the dramatic life of Nikki Kill.
Also, gorgeous cover, btw.