The first 30% or so of this book was so. damn. good. The plot made sense, the characters were interesting, and I could feel the intensity building. There was a serious iceberg sensation; it felt like what I was seeing was incredibly superficial and there was so much hidden beneath the surface. I was second-guessing my first impressions of the characters, trying to figure out where I was being misled, and I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know what was going to happen next.

I was in an all-out sprint, focusing so hard on the hidden information and the possible twists and turns the narrative could take that I ran straight into a brick wall. All of the intensity, the subtleties, the interest, vanished. The characters weren’t complex, manipulative masterminds playing three-dimensional chess with each other. They were narcissistic crazy people. It was as if someone lifted a curtain and revealed pathetic children playing pretend. I do not believe for a moment that if people in the real world acted in the same way as these three characters they would be high functioning, professional adults with friends and relationships and steady careers.

I feel entirely duped by the authors. What I felt was complex, unique writing turned out to be so expected it was boring and I struggled to make it to the end, slogging through the highly predictable, unimaginative path the authors chose. The characters’ motives are questionable which made their chosen actions illogical to a degree that they’re implausible. All of the work done to withhold important information to make the story more exciting instead left the characters looking like idiots who wouldn’t be capable of riding the subway, let alone …