Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was drawn to this book by the publicity comparing it to last year's "Gone Girl." That book was an intricately plotted mystery with stunning twists that were completely unexpected and that actually made sense. It was also extremely well-written, told through the distinctive voices of at least three separate characters. This book doesn't even come close. The author packs in a large number of subplots and mini-mysteries, leading the reader to anticipate a clever and unifying resolution that will tie all the loose threads together in a surprising and satisfying manner. No such luck. Without giving spoilers, I think I can safely say that many (most?) of the subplots in the book are resolved in ways that appear wholly arbitrary and have no connection to the central mystery of what happened to Amelia. The resolution of one of the mysteries (involving the author of a particularly vicious school gossip blog) ultimately turns on a character's wholly implausible motivation that is casually tossed off in a single sentence. Also, unlike "Gone Girl," the two narrators (and just about every other character) speak with utterly interchangeable voices; the author's attempt to create a distinctive 15-year-old's narrative voice largely consists of throwing in the word "like" a lot. Particularly disturbing to me was the poor editing of this book, which is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. (I read the Kindle version, so I don't know if the same mistakes appear in the print edition.) The author's bio tells us that she attended Vassar College and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. So one would hope that she might know the difference between "your" and "you're," "then" and "than," "passed" and "past," "peeked" and "peaked," "confident" and "confidant," "reined" and "reigned," "overdo" and "overdue" (yes, a character says "don't overdue it," and isn't talking about a library book)... and might actually look up how to spell designer Donna Karan (not Donna Karen). As a reader, I found each of these errors painfully distracting, and the large number of them is really inexcusable. I've seen fewer errors in self-published porn on Amazon than in this major HarperCollins release. I'm giving this an extra star because it held my interest and I read it in two days, but only because I was anticipating a payoff that never came.