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Do I recommend this? No lol

I think the only people who will get something out of this are Nancy Drew fans, I mean that's why I read it.I'd played the games but was curious to read the books and thought why not start at the very beginning.

The writing is really clunky both sentence structure-wise and pacing-wise. Not sure if that's a product of the target age of these books or just the time they were written in, but either way I think most teen/adult readers will find it a little jarring. Sadly, I can't even recommend this for kids because of how outdated it is in so many ways. My adult brain can handle having to calibrate to the fact that this is a completely different time period and words don't necessarily mean the same thing and the world works very differently, but most 10-year-olds probably won't. Not to mention the fact that I had to look up what words meant that are in a children's book! (florid-faced and photostat for example)

At the very least it's short and mildly fascinating so maybe pick it up for a readathon

4.5

I'm not sure I have much to say about this one. I enjoyed it, but it definitely feels like part of a series and isn't particularly satisfying on its own. I was quite surprised to find that the book is much more mature than the movie in a good way. In fact, there's a lot they changed for the movie so if like me you loved the movie and wanted to check out the original novel, be prepared for it to be quite different.

A note on the audiobook: while I love the narrator as the main character, when he does the voices of the peculiar kids, the English accent can be a bit painful. It's all borderline cockney no matter the character and there's a lot of noticeable mispronunciations ("bahd" instead of "bad" really got me lol). I got used to it more as it went on, but if it's gonna really bother you maybe don't go for audiobook.

OH MY GOSHHHHHH

My first thriller could not have been a better pick I think! Must have been fate because I checked this out at the library on a whim because I thought "hey I've seen that title before and I'm pretty sure I remember vaguely positive reviews??" HOT DAMN

I finished this in one day because I could not stop reading! It's so fast paced and the tension is always there seeing as it takes place over a short period of time. The main character Darby is also just excellent. I was really able to connect with her (aside from the fact that we both drive ancient honda civics that we named) and she didn't make dumb/unrealistic decisions like I was worried. Also, if you want a thriller where the lead just gets progressively more feral, here you go.

Good thing to note is that this isn't as much of a mystery as the synopsis suggests. So just go in knowing that it's more of a survival thriller than a mystery thriller, though it still has plenty of twists and turns.

Even though I'm giving this 5 stars, I'll admit it's not perfect, but a lot of that is probably personal preference. Like I think the ending could have been a tad less drawn out, and there's at least one plot hole that luckily wasn't major enough to ruin anything but still annoyed me lol. The author also uses the word mushy way too much :/ But at least it had a satisfying ending which is more than I expected on my first thriller adventure.

Content Warnings (aside from what's already in the description): mild gore, gun violence, death, mild torture

I'm flipping between 4 and 4.5 tbh

Dear ACSDAL,
It's not you, it's me. I just don't feel that spark. You're so beautifully written and thoughtfully considered, and you're going to make another reader so happy, but I can't give you what you deserve. I truly wish you all the best and I hope we can stay friends (i.e. I'll try to read your sequels).
Yours sincerely,
ElskaBee

I wanted to love this book so badly! And, like, it was well-written and the characters were complex and everything was well thought out and it did so many things I usually like. For example, love me a good multi-POV book, I also love fairytale stuff, high fantasy, low romance (? is that a thing? i'm inventing it as a thing now ok). So I cannot for the life of me work out why I didn't LOVE this. I liked it and I can acknowledge that it's well-written and highly recommend it as a YA fantasy... but that's it y'all, I'm so sad.

I am not without my complaints, but most of them feel kinda pointless in the scheme of things. The villain was a little over the top, but whatever, it isn't really about her. And I personally did not enjoy some of the political stuff (which is weird because usually that's my favourite part of these kinds of books). But none of that super impacted my overall reading experience so still super weird that I couldn't really enjoy this book :/

Did I love this? No. But it was fine for what it was. I kind of wished it was more about the romance as I felt like there was a lot of stuff in there and so the romance felt like it was only around 10-15% of the whole book. What little there was I did enjoy though. Also I thought the character development was well done and the conflicts that occurred later in the book were realistic and resolved in a satisfying way. I suppose I appreciated the critique of the music industry, but as someone who was already knowledgable about that stuff, it ultimately felt very surface level.

Most of my problems came from a combination of "this isn't for me" and the more contrived conflicts/angst of the first act of the book. The not for me was the whole tour stuff and going from city to city, it just felt a bit boring and I nearly DNF'd until I skimmed ahead and saw that there would finally be some juicy drama and it was definitely better from there.

This isn't a book I'll remember very fondly, most of the time I felt like I was laughing at it rather than with it. I think I could recommend it mostly to people who like YA contemporary and/or are interested in a boy band book, but maybe not people looking for a romance above all else.