How We Fall Apart - Katie Zhao

Initial draw: ✰✰✰✰✰
Character development: ✰✰
Plot/Writing style: ✰✰✰
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends - Krystal, Akil, and Alexander - are the prime suspects, thanks to "The Proctor," someone anonymously incriminating them via the school's social media app.

They all used to be Jamie's closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy's full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too."

Warning going into this: There will be spoilers, although I'm trying not to reveal anything huge. Also, content warning: discussion of self-harm and suicide.

I went into this very excited. I mean, comparing it to Gossip Girl and One of Us is Lying? You get me. Sign me up. Sadly, it was a solid three stars for me - not bad, but it had so much more potential. I got into it and ultimately enjoyed it, but it required a whole lot of suspension of disbelief. The premise is solid and what made me drool at the thought of reading an advanced copy, but I thought the characters could have been much better developed, and some of the key plot points were tough for me to get on board with. The Proctor, for instance, is pretty central to the entire story, but...why is anyone taking this person seriously? This is the Tip Tap post that pins all the suspicion on Nancy and her friends:

"Jamie has four former friends. Each friend has a secret. One day, Jamie goes missing. Which friend is guilty and deserves punishment?

c) the one hiding a criminal
d) the one who traded conscience for grades
a) the one who sunk the lowest to get highest
b) the one who ruined a girl three years ago

Happy testing. The Proctor."

I can't be the only one who finds that incredibly flimsy, and it only gets weaker as each secret is revealed. Most of them are pretty generic, and I would be shocked if the friend group were the only people at the school who had them. I don't want to get too deeply into it and give stuff away, but reading this it seemed like there was an outline and it was followed, but outside of the key plot points nothing got fleshed out. Give me more!

I had the same issue with the characters. Flashbacks to Jamie revealed her to be a pretty unforgivably terrible human, which regardless of how rich she was made it difficult to believe that she had close enough friends that they would let her learn secrets about them. There were some vague attempts to introduce some nuance, but they weren't developed enough to redeem her. Then the other characters were all very cookie-cutter. All her friends act exactly the same, everyone at the school is super generic...meh. 

Finally, the way that self-harm and suicide are handled felt really weird and uncomfortable to me. I know that the whole point of the book is that it's a really high-demand school and basically everyone is stressed to the point of falling apart constantly, but it was strange that literally no one seemed phased by that. Not a single person?! Even after Jamie dies, the teachers and school leadership are still just like...

This school is hard, lol! Talk to a counselor between classes if you're bummed your fellow youth died. 

Uhh ok, Headmaster Charleston. Even "tough" educators have like a modicum of empathy, don't they? I feel like at least one reasonable soul should have stepped in and been like "so this is insane, right?" even if everyone else told them to shut up. That would have made things much less strange for me.

Anyway...at the end of the day, this wasn't bad, but it was disappointing reading it and seeing how it could have been so much better. I'm interested to see if the next book in the series is stronger, now that the world and characters are established. I suppose we shall see.