#when she said that she started dating Dolly who called herself bisexual I heard warning bells go off

[scarlettfevor]

When I wrote this I was barely done with the girl a section and now I'm writing THIS when I'm barely done with girl b, and I just want to say that I am REALLY enjoying this novel. I was a little confused about the characters and I don't like judging the books I've read when I'm barely into them and/or there's still lots of stuff that I don't understand so I went back and reread the entire girl a section (bc I was a bit unclear on things thanks to the audiobook) and I'm proud to say that now I completely get whats going on and whos who. Lastly, I really fucking love this book. It was so bizarre to hear the narrator describe tumblr and the sims 4 to me, like I don't like how similar I am to Violet. But thankfully even though I'm interested in true crime I don't consider myself to be a true crime buff or armchair detective, and I definitely don't have a "favorite serial killer" jfc Violet. But when I first started this novel it was looking like 4 stars and now that I'm nearly 2/3rd of the way through it still is!! I'm so happy because like I've said before, most popular thrillers are trash but this has a level of detail to not only the characters and the relationships but the side characters and the history of the town that you NEVER see in thrillers. I'm kind of obsessed with this book and will probably finish it today, and I want to read boy parts after this because I am also mildly obsessed with Eliza Clark

Finally got ahold of the audiobook of Penance by Eliza Clark and I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand I love the premise and I feel like it's written well enough to where I feel like the author isn't going to clumsily stumble through her own story and fall on her face at the end like the majority of popular thrillers. But also this story suffers from having someone who hasn't been in school for a long time attempting to write teenagers. The funny thing is that whenever I see a horrible portrayal of teenagers, specifically of zoomers its never like, inaccurate portrayals of slang and trends that most teenagers cringe at, it's extremely unnatural dialogue that I don't understand how even a 30 or 40 year old can't see how awkward and cringe and flat out bad of a portrayal they're doing. You can claim that it's regional differences, even if we were all teenagers once I still don't know what it's like to be a popular mean British girl, but I'm fairly certain that actual popular mean British girls don't go around describing themselves as popular mean girls. The funny thing is that they've mentioned several times that these girls (ok it was actually like one girl but she introduced too many characters and I got confused so I can't even remember the name of the girl who said it) are trying to imitate the mean girls in popular American shows/movies. But I think that it's SO funny how instead of going for the obvious Regina George or maybe the more posh Blair Waldorf, they chose Sharpay Evans....I'm very familiar with the popular mean girl trope because I always love the girls who fall into this category and I can say with 100% certainty that none of these girls act like this either. I don't know what the author is going for but it's very painful to listen to.