Luce had spent the past two days avoiding the stares of the other students, who all eyed her with varying degrees of suspicion.

A fire breaks out in the library.  Two students are grievously injured, one bad enough to die and the other bad enough to end up in the hospital.  There is no evidence whatsoever that one killed the other, and plenty of evidence to the contrary (i.e., it’s hard to kill someone while passed out from smoke inhalation).  Now, students don’t need much to go on for rumors, that’s true, BUT, Gabbe and Arriane are both popular fixtures at the school with sway over the other students (or at least, if Luce’s estimation is to be believed) and both of them were immediately and emphatically in defence of Luce.  Students don’t need much proof for gossip, but they do need at least a little if “all” of them are going to be united against the popular girls’ claims.

Book, please stop it with this subplot, you don’t know what you’re doing.  If Luce had come out unscathed, or if the police had been more stringent in investigating Luce, or if she was getting some sort of special treatment (positive or negative) from the teachers, that could all lead to this sort of behavior, but merely being present when an accident breaks out isn’t good enough.

There’s a memorial service for Todd in the cemetery, and Luce manages to spend several pages in the middle of it wrapped up in her obsession for Daniel.  Damn, girl, can’t you show a little bit of respect and put the boy-thoughts on hold for one measly hour?

The rest of the service is taken up with describing things, such as the minister’s clothes.  …wow, you can just feel the emotion dripping off the page, can’t you?  A guy died, and at the service dedicated to him, let’s think about everything else, because noting that the minister has ugly shoes is just so important.

He was a thin man about seventy, lost in a big black jacket. His beat-up athletic shoes were fraying at the laces; his face was lumpy and sunburned. He spoke into a microphone attached to an old plastic boom box that looked like it was from the eighties. The sound that came out was staticky and distorted and hardly carried across the crowd.

Everything about this service was inadequate and completely wrong.

…okay, I was being sarcastic, book.  The fact that you meant that seriously, as in “god, the minister isn’t pretty enough to do justice to our dearly departed,” is somehow so much worse.

That Todd’s body wasn’t even present said so much about the school’s relationship—or utter lack thereof—with the departed boy.

…you mean, like, how it’s not as important as the relationship with HIS FAMILY, since his body is currently with them getting buried?  Yeah, not really a shocker, that one.  In fact, I’d hazard a guess that 100% of memorials held at high schools are done without a body.  What are you even trying to say, book?  Did you just forget that this school isn’t actually the center of everyone’s universe?

None of them had known him; none of them ever would. There was something false about standing here today in this crowd, something made worse by the few people who were crying.

I have been to my unfair share of memorial services for people I barely knew, and for people I did know, and you know what?  …I’m pretty cool with this passage.  I mean, there’s some weird stuff in it, like I still don’t know why she thinks they should have the body.  And from a logical standpoint it still doesn’t make sense.  But people don’t make sense at memorials.  It’s perfectly natural to feel guilty, or to feel a sense of wrong, or to think what’s there doesn’t do justice, or even to cry, not because you miss the person you barely knew, but because you’re faced with mortality and that always messes people up.  You don’t have to actually know the person to feel jacked up by being close to death.  And it’s also natural to think other people are reacting wrong, if that’s not how you’re reacting, because hormones kind of suck like that.

So, ironically, the lack of sense-making in this bit actually takes it closer to reality than further.  It’s still written pretty flat.  I more recognize all this than connect with it, because it’s done in the same flat, emotionless, descriptive tone as the rest of the book and she keeps getting distracted by thoughts of Daniel.  So it’s hard to really see it as exceptional when it’s just more of the same, and it’s hard to see this as an emotional reaction instead of an objective assessment when there’s basically no emotion in the telling of it.  So, nice in the basics, but still a poor execution.

Also, we segue straight from that into flirting with Cam without so much as a blip, so, you know, there’s that.  She thinks about how Cam is so nice and helpful and comforting and yet she still doesn’t like him as much as Daniel.

This, actually, doesn’t bother me either.  That’s a thing that happens.  Sometimes the easy guys are boring.  There’s some validity in the thought that a bit of mystery holds allure, that actually working for something makes it more enticing, and that’s not a bad thing.  There’s also people who like easy, so the easy guys need to find the girls who like easy, and that’s okay.  Not everyone fits together or has to.

It’s just when the mysterious guys are also assholes that it becomes a problem.

And when chasing said mysterious guys takes over your life and ruins your schoolwork.  That’s a problem, too.

Luce leaves Cam and runs into Daniel instead.  Because that’s really all this book is.  Just that line repeated over and over for 20 chapters.

Daniel invites her to go somewhere private with him, because he knows that if he makes kissytimes with Luce she’ll die, and he knows that if he spends time with her it’ll lead to kissytimes, but he…???

Fuck, why is Daniel even still at that school?  Why doesn’t he just take off the moment she shows up?  After enough times of running into her and watching her die, why does he stick around?  If being around her inevitably leads to this, why?  He’s got options.  Maybe not great ones, depending on how the whole angel thing works in this world, but even straight-up running would be better than killing someone, right?  But he sticks around anyway, knowing that the end result will be death.

He’s basically okay with killing her for the sake of kissytimes.

They talk about squishy things that do nothing to advance the plot (romance or otherwise) and run off to their special spot in the woods.

“I mean, have you really considered going somewhere else? Asking your parents for a transfer? It’s just … Sword & Cross doesn’t seem like the best fit for you.”

…we were told most of the student body is there by court mandate, Luce included.  I’m pretty sure if getting out was as simply as a “pretty please,” this place wouldn’t exist anymore.

And if that is an option, Daniel, why don’t you go?

After much pointless talk, Luce starts talking about her shadows, hoping to shock Daniel.  Which works, but not in the way she’d hoped.  He believes her, and the fact that she can see them scares him.

For some reason explaining what the shadows do involves Luce touching Daniel all over.  “To demonstrate.”  Uh-huh, sure.

I’m still not scared of these shadows.  Which is almost impressive, considering they’ve killed two people now.  You have to try to neuter your monsters if they’re unscary after two murders.  But the way Luce goes on about how they show up and hover around, then angsts in her own head about how terrible that is, makes the whole murder thing nearly an afterthought.  Most of the focus is put on the non-scary things they do, so I’m not scared.

Daniel remains all freaked out that she can see the shadows, says that’s never happened before, but doesn’t elaborate.  Luce doesn’t ask him to, because she’s too busy being obsessed with wanting to kiss him to even notice that he’s being suspicious as fuck.

He leaves while her eyes are closed (???) and she gets freaked out because there’s this weird purple light after he’s gone.  Instead of following up on that, she just sits there until the purpleness goes away.

So we’ve got a guy that obviously knows what’s going on, mysterious lights when he’s around, and a protagonist that sits around going “fuck that shit, I’mma gonna ignore it.”  Riveting.