I did notice before, because frankly one line and I was bored, but at the end of last chapter Mara saw Claire in the mirror again.  And then at the start of this chapter she convinces herself that it’s no big deal.  Didn’t we already see this scene?  With the “dramatic” chapter break in the same point, too?

There was no one there. Just the PTSD.

This pisses me off a little more every time I see it, but also, there’s not anything new to say about it.

Well, at least this time we see some actual lasting reaction out of Mara, as she knows that there’s not really a dead person in her mirror but she still can’t bring herself to look, so she asks her mom to put her make up on for her.  Now that’s a really nice, low key reaction, the sort of thing we should be seeing all throughout the novel.

Mara’s mother also givers her some emerald and diamond earrings.  To wear to a high school party.  On the beach.  I guess we’ve nailed down the family’s financial status a bit more: so fucking rich that no one worries about their heirloom jewels getting lost at a bonfire kegger.  No wonder they managed to move states at the drop of a hat.

A glance at the clock told me I had only five minutes before Daniel had to leave to meet his little nerdlet.

So last chapter you were such a nerd and then this chapter you’re mocking David’s date for being a nerd?  Consistency, what’s that?

Once we were in the car, Daniel put on some Indian music. He knew I was not a fan.

 “Can I change it?”

 “No.”

So…still not really much on the whole mixed heritage front, and then we let this just sort of slide on by like it’s nothing?  Well, harping on it out of the blue would be odd, but a string of differences like this would paint a nice picture for us, and alas.  When there’s only one or two they seem less like a pattern and more like…well, no big deal.

This party is…in a club?  I went back to see the original comment about the party, and it only says “a party on South Beach.”  Naturally I thought that was the name of a beach (what?  Don’t look at me like that) because of the preposition “on.”  Turns out South Beach is a neighborhood, but then why wouldn’t the phrase be “in South Beach”?

Although I can see why she said it wasn’t her scene, now.  Crowded clubs really require that you already like them in order to have fun.  You can’t go into those in the wrong mood and just sort of warm up to it like you can a beach party or a house party.

Although although, how did a bunch of high school kids set up a party in a club?  Is it more that they all just decide to attend on the same night?  That night being a Wednesday?

The level of undress was truly impressive; a handful of whorish angels, devils, and fairies teetered toward the bar in stilettos, sucking in their torsos and puffing out their twinkling cleavage. Much to my dismay, I spotted Anna among them. She had shed her usually wholesome ensemble for a staggeringly sparse angel getup with the requisite halo and wings. She overdid it on the makeup, the push-up bra, and the heels, and looked well on her way to ending up as some accountant’s midlife crisis.

I hate you with the burning fire of a thousand suns.

Also, if the club is as crowded as you say, they’re probably more comfortable like that.  Gets fucking hot in those places.

Her brother goes to dance with his crush/date, and Mara just stands around being scandalized by all the female skin on display because apparently she’s stuck in the 1950s or something.  Then she sees Noah.

He wore dark jeans and a hoodie, apparently, despite the heat.

…what part of that is supposed to be “apparently”?  Are you not sure if he’s really wearing a hoodie or not?  Is the heat unclear?  How did you confuse me so much with one little word?

Noah is talking to a pretty girl that Mara sorta-kinda recognizes, and then he says something that makes the girl look over at Mara and giggle.  Mara is instantly mortified and decides to leave the party early, making Daniel get a ride back with his new bae (who is named Sophie).

And…that’s it.  That’s all we’ve got for the party.  We had more page time getting ready for the party than we had at the stupid thing, none of it really made sense, and basically all that happened was that Mara stood around judging other women for their state of undress.  What an utterly dull and useless bit of meandering shit.

Mara gets home to an empty house and a note saying her parents and younger brother went to see a movie.  She’s feeling vaguely ominous and paranoid because the front door wasn’t latched and keeps looking for signs of a robbery, but instead she comes to a hallway where the doors are all on the wrong side.  And then after she runs away and comes back they’re all in the correct spot again. 

Um…spooky?

As far as hallucinations go, that’s not really impressive or scary.  It could be, if, say, she were losing her sense of special awareness and that was making it hard to navigate inside her own home, or even making her question her surroundings in general.  But as an isolated incident?  And after she’s already seen her dead friends chasing her around?  *yawn*

OMG this chapter is so fucking dull.  We go through Mara’s entire post-party routine.  We hear about everything in her fridge as she decides on a snack, and we go through each stage of her getting undressed.  Seriously?  One piddly little half a chapter on the party but an entire paragraph about getting undressed before a bath?

There’s some mild other freakiness as she finds a box of pictures she didn’t remember getting out of her closet, then the bath water turns off and she doesn’t remember turning it off.  It’s a decent bit of tension and I wouldn’t mind it so much if the whole book so far hadn’t been so dragging.  And if I weren’t still pissed about the downer of a party.  Then things finally kick up a notch as she drops an earring in the tub and reaches in to get it, only to find the water burning hot and something holding her down so she can’t get her arm out.  She passes out there, and when she wakes up she has to go to the ER for her burned skin.

At the hospital, Mara can’t really tell anyone what happened without sounding ridiculous (IDK, it just suddenly got really hot?) so she tries to pass it off as  freak accident and leaves out the “something unseen grabbed my arm” part.  Her mom says she’s going to make Mara go talk to a counselor at last.

maybe it was time to do things my mother’s way. Maybe talking to someone would help.

Wait a minute.

WAIT A MINUTE.

So all this time, Mara didn’t really have a problem with psychiatric help?  She’s perfectly willing to go and do this, and all it took was being convinced that the problem is serious enough to warrant a doctor?  There’s no hint of “I can’t because this bad thing will happen” or anything like that?  She just needed to realize that, you know, she needed help?

THEN WHY THE FLYING FUCK WASN’T SHE SEEING SOMEONE FROM THE BEGINNING?

For fuck’s sake, she forced her entire family to move to a new state to avoid seeing a therapist, but now she’s all “eh, let’s give it a shot”?

What the hell, book?  What the hell?

I don’t even know what to do with this.  I literally have no idea.  Are we supposed to agree with Mara that being chased through the school by your dead ex-boyfriend is just whatever, and that’s why she didn’t think it was bad enough to warrant telling someone?

Also, if her mom can just make an appointment and say “you’re going,” then why hasn’t she done this already?

Also also, a proper hot water heater should have safety controls on it so that water will not get to “second degree burns” temperatures, so why isn’t anyone mentioning how weird it is that she got burned from bathwater?  The doctor says she would have had to leave her hand in the water a long time to get so burned, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that it shouldn’t have been hot enough to burn in the first place.

While talking to her mom, Mara mentions she was trying to get the earrings out of the tub, and her mom points out that she’s still wearing both of them.  Dun dun dun.