Thankfully, we do not have to endure a makeout scene with the king of the asshats just yet, as some girls come into the girl’s bathroom to cockblock him.

Noah leaves, and apparently the shock of almost making out with such an illustrious hottie renders Mara unable to function for several minutes afterwards.  No, really.  She just…stands there mutely and helplessly thanks to all that…standing close together that just happened.  Am I supposed to be impressed by something?

On Monday, he’d walked out on me like it was nothing. Like Jamie warned me he would. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting.

Um…look, I know your reasoning skills aren’t firing on all cylinders, but you did notice the audience you two had, right?

Randomly after one of her classes, Mara hears someone talking about the dead girl from the news a few chapters ago.  Then Mara randomly blurts out that she was in an accident before moving to Florida.  No, it really is that random. 

Jamie shifted uncomfortably. “It’s cool,” he said. Then he smiled. “So when do you want to study Algebra?”

A random segue, and a ridiculous one.

What a strange, forced little interlude.  And the whole matter of poor, dead Jordana and Mara’s accident are both dropped like a hot rock, making it even more obvious that there’s not really a place for this subplot.  It may turn out to be necessary later on, but that just makes this part of the book poorly plotted, because there’s not room for Jordana in it.

[Jamie:] “I’ve already learned Parseltongue. What else is there?”

 “Elvish.”

 “You’re like, a gen-u-wine nerd

Seriously?  She hasn’t shown one ounce of interest in pop culture until this point, and I don’t think even this one counts, since it’s not like it takes a deep and abiding interest in the LotR to know that elves have their own language.  In fact, as near as we can tell, Mara doesn’t actually have any interests at all.

I lied.  She likes to draw.  After school she gets the itch to art and tries to find her sketchbook, but it’s gone missing.

Sluggishly, I put my books back into my locker and removed the flier that was now stuck to the front of my Algebra textbook. A costume party on South Beach hosted by one of Croyden’s elite, in honor of the teacher workday tomorrow. I didn’t bother reading the rest of the details before letting it fall to the ground again. Not my scene.

Why don’t you like beach costume parties?  I mean, as far as parties go, that sounds fun, and only one person in school actively dislikes you.  Do you not like beaches?  Do you not like parties?  Do you like parties, but not with strangers?  Do you feel like you can’t party because of guilt?  Why is this not your scene?  There are so many options, why would you go for the utterly dull “I just don’t like shit because reasons” excuse?  She’s already dull enough, we don’t need more dullness!

Screw it. I ripped a flier off of another locker and shoved it in my messenger bag. I needed a party.

Wait.  So first we don’t know why she didn’t want to go, and now we don’t know why she changed her mind?  Then why couldn’t she just want to go in the first place?

I get the feeling that this is just because one stereotype that heroines in YA paranormals fall into is that she has to be a “cool” outcast.  Not one of the in-crowd, on the fringes of society, but because she’s just too awesome for anyone to understand.  And, like many incarnations of “cool” in the media, all that really means is not being interested in anything and then sneering at the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t actually make one interesting.  (Um…unless you can blog about the things you hate.  Then it’s totally cool.  Obviously.  *shifty eyes*)

Mara and Daniel meet up to go home, and they both admit to wanting to go to the beach party so they’re going to drive together.  But once they get home, they notice there’s a crowd of news vans in front of their house.

THE SEA OF REPORTERS PARTED FOR DANIEL’s car as he pulled into the driveway.

Those are some uncharacteristically polite reporters. 

They get inside and find out that the reporters are there because her dad is now the defense council for the guy accused of murdering Jordana Palmer.  Actually he has been for a while, but it was announced today, thus reporters.

Okay, look.  Her dad has been working late and that was mentioned plenty without it being awkward, so why couldn’t we hear about her murder through all of that business, instead of the super-awkward “let’s randomly talk about this one chapter before it becomes important”?

Seems her dad took over the case from a friend of his…back before they even moved.  How?

Literally everything about her dad’s job makes more sense if they’re just moving from suburbs to city.  She can still get the new girl plot line, but her dad doesn’t have to switch jobs and states and can have long-running, high-profile cases.  Not to mention the fact that a lawyer can’t really switch states on the drop of a dime, nor can they really take cases from out of state, because they have to be registered to work in their jurisdiction.  Every state has different laws, so to be a lawyer in one state you have to prove you know all the local nitty gritty.  Mara’s dad literally cannot take an out of state case unless he is licensed in both RI and FL, and why would he be?  Staying in one general area makes so much more sense than moving halfway across the country and then spontaneously having awesome work.

Apparently everyone else in the family knew about this and they didn’t tell Mara.  Because…stress?  Because they don’t want to talk about death around the girl who just had a brush with it?  Kind of a stretch, but not unreasonable, people do weird things when trying to be sensitive.  Mara gets upset about it anyway.

Her anger ends in a big fat lot of anticlimax and nothing, so she goes off to get ready for the party instead.

Apparently this party is just a “yay we don’t have school tomorrow” party because it’s a teacher inservice day.  On a Thursday.  Who has those on a Thursday?  Weird.

She borrows an old dress from her mother and gets costum-ed up as a “vintage model,” which is snazzy.  Her mom is clearly worried about her, but once again does absolutely nothing and enables her to go out and party.  This is fine, really it is, because Mara hasn’t given any outward signs of distress so far in this book…but it still doesn’t fit at all with Mara’s repeated insistence that her mother is hovering, overprotective, and actively searching for a reason to get her into more professional help.  Her whining about that is past starting to annoy me.