from Laura:

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma -- 2 stars

Eh. This one had a little too much time travel/ghostliness for me, and I didn't like any of the characters.

Favorite quote:

People can't move on until the finger is pointed, and the gavel's come down. This is called closure, and it's also called justice, and they are not always the same thing. ( )

I think this is a unique story, so I give it points for that.

But I think where this book didn't work for me was the story told by Amber. It felt jarring and I spent way way way too much of the book thinking "well, who the heck is Amber?"

The story of Amber and her role is told soon enough but it definitely distracted me from the story. I'm glad it was all revealed in the end and I did like the interesting twist. I knew a lot of the elements beforehand but hadn't guessed it all nor how it would all end.

interesting and unique. ( )

Honestly, I'm disappointed. I feel like the author tried to drag out the mystery too much and it made me more impatient instead of curious. I don't know, the characters were alright but the way it wrapped up was somewhat dissatisfying and I wanted the crimes to be less predictable. While I liked the writing style and the author had interesting prose, it didn't make up for parts I disliked.

My biggest problem was with the pacing. While the beginning was fun and I was engaged, about a half of the way in I was almost skimming and flipping through the pages. At that point, you can also guess how the crimes happened because of familiar tropes that the author didn't steer clear of and because the characters have already done so much alluding to it. I also believe that a better decision would have been to let Orianna have a narrator part instead of Violet. Was Violet's perspective supposed to move us, make us sympathize with her, or make us believe she was a horrible person? All I got from that was that she is a somewhat cold person and that's pretty much it. I don't know, I was not satisfied with her narration because if you're going to have the culprit narrating, at least give us more interest so we either care about her or root against her. I obviously did neither. And another thing that was annoying was, in about 3/4 of the book having Violet not tell us that she killed those girls even though it was obvious by the way she and others said Orianna was innocent. If Violet says Orianna is innocent and you, Violet tell us implicitly that you two and the murdered girls were the only ones there, then THERE IS NO SUSPENSE! WE KNOW IT WAS YOU! SO WHY DRAG IT OUT!? Gosh, it's little things like that that can't make me hate this book but add up to where I am annoyed.

The atmosphere, however, was great. I really liked the inmate girls because even though we saw little of them they felt like real and interesting people. Although I don't want them to necessarily be narrators, I wish they had more of a part. My favorite was probably Natty.

Oh, and the whole poisoning thing by the vine? Lame. I wanted more intrigue. Apparently Amber put it in because she wanted to stay? I don't know, I just wanted more pizzazz. This is a paranormal story ,anyway, so we don't need super strict realism, in my opinion. ( )

Great story told from the perspective of three teenage girls all intertwined together. A good read about how far one goes for friendship and the consequences of jealousy. ( )

Delightfully spooky ballet/ghost/prison mystery. I was never scared, but so fascinated by the twists and turns of the narrative and the interesting unfolding of the various stories. ( )