Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten // Failed mindfuckery

Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten
Genres: Contemporary (YA), Mystery (YA)
Pages: 320
Goodreads

Pitched as Gone Girl meets Thirteen Reasons Why
June barely has time to mourn the death of her best friend Delia, before Delia's ex-boyfriend convinces her Delia was murdered, and June is swept into a tangle of lies, deceit, and conspiracy.

This book was like a rollercoaster (and not of emotions, of plot). The beginning was a little slow. It wasn’t until about page 100 – 120 that anything of significance happened. Then, once that event happened, I was hooked. It was a game of “whodunnit” with a murder mystery that had me second-guessing everyone (even some side character that I was so convinced murdered her friend). Then, the big reveal came with about 20-30% of the book left, and I was over it. I wasn’t a fan of the “mindfuckery” that happened.

This is what I would describe this story as Paper Towns meets Gone Girl. I loved Gone Girl, hated Paper Towns, so you can kind of see my dilemma.

Something that bothered me about the story: View Spoiler »Okay, so, don’t get me wrong, sexual assault is NOT OKAY. And it sucks when people get off who are actually guilty of the crime. But Delia pretending to be dead to get away from someone (who actually didn’t even rape her) just seems really freaking crazy. There are other things that could have been done. This just reminded me SO MUCH of Paper Towns and how much I hated Margo (is that her name) for being so selfish and running away. On top of that, Delia then messes with Ryan for…flirting? That also seemed like a really extreme reaction. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be rooting for all of this because “YA! Screw him!” or think “Wow, Delia is a crazy bitch”. « Hide Spoiler

The main character is June. She describes herself as basically just an average high school girl, and that’s the feeling you get. There’s nothing really defining about her character, rather it seems like she puts a lot of energy into Delia. I never really felt like I got to know who June was, just how much she loved her friend. 

You get to know Delia through flashbacks, and from those, she didn’t even seem like that great of a friend. June talks about her like she loved hard and did wonderful things for people. To me, she just seemed like a selfish and horny teenager.

Side note about the characters: They all had kind of odd names. Delia. Jeremiah. Sebastian. Ashling (like, what even is this name? I kept thinking of a little woodland sprite.) Ryan was the most normal name in this book.

The pacing, as I stated above, was off. Slow, then fast, then slow again — but that’s because of my lack of interest in the plot. However, I have the same feeling for the writing. The entire beginning is clouded in sadness — it was like a rain cloud was following June everywhere. Then, when View Spoiler »Delia comes back into the story, I was thrown off. I didn’t really like how Weingarten wrote her chapters. They seemed…odd and extreme. Delia would talk about eating people in a very “real” way. Like, I honestly thought she wanted to eat people? It was strange. « Hide Spoiler

I’m disappointed because I was really looking forward to a YA murder mystery and this let me down. There was a lot happening from drug dealers to cheating to suicide to rape — and, somehow, none of it added up to a great mystery. The characters were lackluster, missing the development and individual voices needed to really connect the reader. Overall, it wasn’t a book I would recommend to too many people.

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
World Building
Overall:	2 / 5