raind0ll's reviews
38 reviews

this was a really good book! ignore the start date, that’s not correct lol. i am still slightly confused as to who killed eddie but i’ll assume it was tiffany and she isn’t really dead? who knows!

okay. i finally finished this book. it really wasn’t that long of a read, but it took a while because i would never be itching to read this. before u say anything, i want to acknowledge the passion behind this book. i know that all authors have passion, but this author wrote this after losing a great friend of hers. that doesn’t mean i can’t criticize this book, though.

for one, and my biggest issue - this author proudly says that she “doesn’t use autocorrect” and it’s very apparent. for a professional, published book, i have never seen this many spelling errors and punctuation errors. next, and i’m gonna be incredibly honest here, this feels like something i would dream to write of in middle school. maybe i’m above the age demographic, i’m 17! maybe it is for middle school ages, but the dark gruesome matter has me thinking otherwise. there’s just too many books similar to this, with the idea of fairy tales and high school girls.

this book wasn’t terrible, but i would never recommend it to someone of my age. it was an okay read, and that’s all. i don’t think it’s something i’ll keep on my bookshelves for long, though.

(ignore start date, that is not at all correct.)
this. book. was. so. good.

i’ve already ordered the second one, i can’t wait!! there’s so much more to be solved!

oh, only criticism; there’s a good amount of spelling errors and forgotten words for a published book, so i think the author should invest in a better proofreader!!

once again, couldn’t put this one down!! a few typos, but not as much as the first. excited to read the third one!

this book gave me trauma

this book is detailed- at some points, boringly detailed (i promise we do not need the full names of EVERY person working on this case). i decided to check out this book after it was linked in the show notes of Morbid (a true crime podcast) as a source from which they pulled information from. the hosts recommended it highly, and so i gave it a chance. i think in total, this book is just average. the writing isn’t anything to write home about (hah!) but it gets the job done and tells the story. however, i enjoyed the experience of listening to Morbid’s episode about this case much more. i do think the entirety of Hoffman’s confession letter is worth reading, and the photos at the back of the book are some i’ve never seen before, so that was nice (i read the online version, not sure if these are in the physical copies). but overall, there’s not much here that you can’t find elsewhere.

i’ll be honest - i didn’t like this one as much as the others. it got confusing towards the end, and to be fair, that could be because i took a break while reading this book. i still have enough interest to finish the series though! i’ll write a full review after i’ve read the entire series, as i feel that’s the only right way to review series.

this review has a few minor spoilers, but nothing that reveals major plot points or the ending of the story.

“It's funny how you can recognize someone's voice in how they cry. She was just crying a little, just small, soft sobs,
and she got it under control once she knelt down.”

forewarning, this is going to be a long review for no real reason.

sometime in march of 2015, i bought this book for $3.99 at half price books. i can tell you that in confidence because the half price sticker is still on the front cover. there’s no telling how many times i read this book. it was short enough that i could finish it in a day, but long enough that i could make it last multiple days if i wanted to. it was my go-to book when i wanted to read something and didn’t have anything new. i’ve kept it all these years and the pages have since warped from some type of spill, the spine has been broken many times, and it’s got this lovely old book smell to it.

i’m currently waiting for a book to ship in the mail, one i’m reading in class, and another i’m reading only every now and then as part of an impromptu book club. so, it came that time again that i needed something to read. that’s when i remembered this little gem and i picked it off my shelf for the first time in years. i remember it being one of my favorite books, and i wanted to see if it held up. spoiler alert; it kind of did.

first thing about this book: i should NOT have been reading this in the 5th grade. i don’t know if i just read over these parts without understanding them but there are a surprising amount of sexual jokes and tensions i did NOT remember until i reread this. however, i suppose it makes sense since this is from the perspective of a sophmore.

throughout reading this book, that’s something i kept reminding myself about the writing. maybe it’s giving the author too much credit, and it’s just a cover for some lazy-bad writing, but i’m going to pretend he put some deeper meaning into this and wrote the things he did all for reason.

because even throughout the end, where there’s serious consequences and dangers, the narrator is STILL being a horny little bitch for these freshman girls they got stuck with!

the narrator will get fixated on small things like his acne or the fact that he hasn’t been online in multiple days, and at times it seems fictitious, but i suppose in a situation like this it would be easy to get lost on the small things. i think some other people in the reviews are forgetting that, as i see a lot of hounding on this part. at the end of the day, these are kids. when the water stops running in the boys bathroom, he asks one of the girls to check if the water still works in the girls bathroom, even though he could easily check it himself. it’s these small things that remind us that these are kids at the end of the day.

that’s not to say the writing is perfect. sometimes it tends to flip flop between that playful, innocent thinking and then suddenly a line will pop up like “Is it better to die in your sleep?” and it doesn’t come off as sincere as it normally should. also, the last sentence/paragraph is honestly lame. it could have ended in a much cooler line, but i don’t disagree with the actual ending like many do.


so, is this book worth reading? well, that’s up to you, but i think this is definitely for a younger audience (not as young as 11 when i was reading it, but you get the point).

this book absolutely sucks. it’s not gorey, it’s not sad or enlightening. it’s not heart wrenching or scary. this is a sad excuse for a book. none of the characters are likeable (i don’t even have sympathy for the main character who we are supposed to feel for), the grammar and spelling is worse in some places than a wattpad story, and the actual font used in the book is even atrocious. save your time, and stay away from matt shaw. he’s not a good writer.