It was Riley who helped me recover my memories. Guiding me through childhood stories and reminding me of the lives we used to live and the friends we used to have, until it all began to resurface.

Hold up a tick.  We had a whole chapter of backstory about the first few times you saw your sister’s ghost, but you failed to mention that you had some sort of amnesia?

That’s seriously the comment we get on it, too.  She moves right along to even more telling and exposition, not even implying that it was a bad metaphor or something.  Just “lol, and I lost my memories, but they’re back now.”

The next morning, we get to see Riley in present day, making the whole last chapter moot.  Book could have skipped right to this and we would have followed along fine.

When a chapter can be removed without affecting the story, it should be.

Riley does nothing besides snark on Ever’s clothing choice, then she’s out of the chapter and we’re stuck with Haven and Miles again.  Wow, so useful, isn’t she?

At school, Haven is literally standing at the door and watching for Damen to arrive, because fucking Damen is all this book cares about.  He hasn’t even done anything yet besides be hot, but the book has zero fucks to give, because that’s all that’s important so everyone’s going to sit around and talk about fucking Damen some more.

Fuck.

I’m already sick of this guy.

Haven is upset that Ever lent Damen her book and calls her “competition.”  Because, lol, that’s all girls are, right?  They’re just competition to get at the hottest boy.  Throw a boy in the mix and they’ll claw at each other to get at him, no solidarity here!

I have a theory.  It applies mostly to the rich women of ye old, but that part of history’s society had a huge influence on culture in general, so hear me out.  It used to be that a woman’s position in life was dependent entirely on her husband.  Marry a Duke, become a Duchess.  Marry a fishmonger, become a nobody.  So getting married to the best (but some standards) man really was something you had to aspire to and work for, because who cares about the guy, you want to be a peer.  There’s only so many of those, what with families having all those younger sons that aren’t going to get any titles.  It’s a decision that’s going to form your entire future, and you’ll be stuck with it forever, because if your husband is a titless layabout gambling addict, there’s shitall you can do about it.  Picking the good husband is picking the good life, so of course people were going to get pretty damn competitive about it.

Except we’ve held on to that mindset for some reason.  We’re still writing like girls have to fight with each other to get the “dukes,” even though there is no universal hierarchy of male quality anymore.  Especially not when everyone involved is middle class highschoolers.  We’re playing out the same tropes and idiocies that only make sense in historical novels, even though they make no fucking sense in modern day.  Tell me all the girls are fighting over a duke, okay, I get that.  Tell me they’re all fighting over random hot highschooler? No, that’s stupid, everyone has a different idea of hot and there’s no reason that Other Random Hot Guy wouldn’t be just as viable a choice. 

These books are encouraging female-on-female hatred and competition by promoting the idea that there’s a “best” out there in terms of romantic partners, and if you don’t get it then you’re a looser. Because apparently we’re still judged based on the men in our lives, not what we do ourselves.

Because fuck feminism, that’s why.

And then the fucknozzle himself shows up in her class so we can continue on with this fucking book that apparently doesn’t care that the main character can see ghosts.  Nope, that is not worthy of a story, just FUCKING DAMEN.

He tries to make small talk to her as he returns her borrowed book, but the narration tries to paint it as OMG SO DRAMATIC by talking about his “intense” looks and “intimate” smiles, all while EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE ROOM is literally holding their breaths and waiting to hear this fascinating conversation about music continue.

I see through you, book.  You can dress up boring small talk however you want; it’s still unimpressive.