People Like Us by Dana Mele

Synopsis:

 

Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she's reinvented herself entirely. Now she's a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl's body is found in the lake, Kay's carefully constructed life begins to topple.

The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay's finally backed into a corner, she'll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make...not something that happened.

Rating: 🌟🌟

There are four LGBT+ girls in this book. FOUR. I couldn't believe it. I knew that this novel had some LGBT+ rep, but I was not at all prepared for the heavens to open up and bless me with so many gay girls in one place. As happy as I am to see LGBT+ rep more and more present in books, it's also true that LGBT+ men are more common than women. I am SO here for girls kissing girls.

But that's about all this novel has to offer.

I did enjoy People like Us. The writing is good, but not too complicated, which made for an easy, quick read. The mystery was intriguing enough to keep my interest. But there was too much going on, and not enough length or depth to sustain the plot. We have Jessica's murder, the revenge website, Kay's recent breakup with Spencer, Kay's complicated relationship with Brie, Kay's new friendship with Nola, six mean girls to keep track of, Detective Morgan suspecting Kay as Jessica's murderer, and the mystery surrounding Kay's dead brother and best friend. That's WAY too much for a 384 page book. I read the hardcover edition, and the text was especially large as well, making the novel even shorter content-wise.

Because there was SO MUCH going on, I found myself confused for much of the novel. Plotlines and characters that seemed crucial at one point would randomly get dropped in favor of something else. Then that would get dropped for yet another new thing. I couldn't tell what was important, what to pay attention to. It just seemed messy.

Not to mention, the treatment of Jessica's murder was so wildly unrealistic that it killed the believably of the story for me. The adults in the novel were either props or villains, placed only to antagonize Kay. What the heck was up with Detective Morgan? That's not how a professional would conduct herself in a murder investigation. That's not how the real world works.

And that ending? Yikes.

2 stars because we have four gay girls and none of them die (I think), so that deserves a star in itself.