Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

Extremely slow paced. Found myself getting frustrated with how frequently the story bounced from character to character. It made it seem choppy and was hard to get the whole picture. Right as new information would come to light it would cut to a new perspective. I found myself having all these questions and very little answers.
The story started to snowball and pick up pace as you realize not one of the Gloss girls really knew anything about the others. All the secrets started coming to light and answers finally started arriving. The ending was very sad but it was satisfactory. The perspective from Cassidy's sister broke my heart, even her family knew next to nothing about her.
I enjoyed the look at the underbelly of fame that this book gave us. The emotions that were written into this book carried very well, the deep sadness and loneliness radiated whenever we were reading from Cassidy's perspective.

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icieri's review

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

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lhartjed's review

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This book is definitely better than many of the same genre, however it doesn’t do nearly enough to justify how twisted it attempts to sell itself as. The back and forth of the time jumps keeps the book exciting, and it’s a shame it ends when it does. The ending feels ambiguous compared to what the book jacket declares, and the years, decade, between when Cassidy’s journal ends and her suicide is really what’s missing to sell the premise. Better than other books of the genre but not totally satisfying in its conclusion.

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jadynrko2416's review

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emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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mariahcervelli's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The plot I read before I actually read the book was gratifying. When I opened the first page I wanted to know how far it was going to get into those topics, there was small tangents and tid bits mostly from cassidy, and there was some depth to it, I just don’t think there was a ton of depth for any of the other gloss girls pov’s in the book. This book is the unraveling of Cassidy holmes so i think it showed it well. But, with the alongside of the other Pov’s I didn’t really like the some of the gloss girls if you think about their actions throughout the book. Rose had some secrets and they were unexpected but her development as a character never really hit, she was still the same until the last few chapters. Back to Cassies death. The real question is how exactly did she die? and another question is Why was the ending that? I honestly didn’t like the ending, the book didn’t tell me how she committed it just gave us hints at her depression which isn’t bad i just thought the entire premise of the book was about that. I felt super bad for Cassie and she made mistakes along the way but she was honestly trying her best. I wish they touched base with Cassie’s sexuality and her relationship she had (no spoilers) rather than it be constant denying. I didn’t care for Merry’s daughter and she honestly was kind of a bad person regardless of the information she was looking for and there was no big discoveries in the entire book. But I actually enjoyed hearing about her in her gloss days and sometimes it was super entertaining! This isn’t a bad review I just had the wrong expectations!

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avabudavari's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

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cassie7e's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

One star for competent writing, one star for prominent queer rep. If this had been marketed as YA instead of adult, I might have had different expectations.

Maybe I'm just too old for immature teen drama, but I found all the characters offputting and unlikeable. They are terrible to each other and all think they are in the right, or are responsible for all the wrong in the world. I don't think it's unrealistic, especially in how teen girl performers are exploited, but made it very hard for me to root for any of them or really care how their storylines played out.

I also found the "mystery" of Cassidy's depression confusing. It was neither surprising to me that a character in her position would struggle with mental health for years, nor was there ever a conclusive explanation found for her struggles to justify everyone's bizarre interest/confusion about it.

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