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itsnotalakeitsanocean's review
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I picked this up not realising it was the sequel to another book I haven't read, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It definitely scratched the itch for reading about silly rich family problems. Also I somehow managed to completely miss that this book was by the same author as The Inheritance Games series (which I don't intend to read because I hear it gets worse in later installments).
I'm going to forgo my usual "what I liked; what I didn't like" format in favour of some criticism:
I'm going to forgo my usual "what I liked; what I didn't like" format in favour of some criticism:
- I understand this is the second installment of a series and we should know who is who, but a family tree would have been beneficial;
especially when the "musical chairs involving parents" gets involved - The entire White Gloves plotline became completely irrelevant after a while. Also it felt like the girls got away with sneaking out to the initiation challenges far too easily. That said, I don't know what a good replacement for the sorority would be.
- The constant flashbacks and flash forwards got to be annoying after a while too. In the case of the flashbacks
to the mothers/aunts as teens, the information felt like it was split up into multiple flashbacks for the sake of adding cliffhangers rather than uncovering a series of events over the course of a day and night . I think it was because I was so lost trying to understand all the different scandals that the eventual twin plot twist didn't make sense to me. It was especially egregious when JLB had to add an entire chapter explaining Kaci's motives instead of them being hinted at or Sawyer and friends uncovering them.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, and Infidelity
Moderate: Murder, Kidnapping, and Confinement
Minor: Gun violence, Pregnancy, and Miscarriage
emmajh91's review
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Death, Kidnapping, Confinement, Death of parent, Grief, and Mental illness
ameliambetan's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Murder, and Kidnapping
tjazz's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Murder, Abandonment, Death, and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Dysphoria
Minor: Infertility, Infidelity, Cancer, Kidnapping, and Miscarriage
emjen16's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Kidnapping, Grief, Death, and Infidelity
Minor: Alcohol, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Blood, and Murder
kingrosereads's review
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Bruv. If you thought the first book was wild, just hold onto your hats for this one. This was a rollercoaster of a ride filled with so many twists it was insane. Like I mean the Charlie meme and red yarn levels of insane. I gave my brother a rundown of what happened in these two books and it took nearly an hour and I STILL didn’t include everything that was crazy about this. This was some telenovela, Pretty Little Liars shit that had me yelling “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!”
So if you read the first one (please do that first—this review and this book won’t make sense without reading book one) you know Sawyer and the whole Taft family. Well now it’s summer time and the family is heading to the lake house! At this point, you know that Sawyer is a product of a teenage pregnancy pact and the outcome of her mother (Ellie) sleeping with her brother-in-law (JD) who was 23 at the time and Ellie was 17. Sawyer isn’t able to tell her cousin (Lily) the truth about sharing a dad. Sawyer struggles with this secret for about a quarter of the book. But her main focus is finding out what happened to the other participant in Ellie’s pregnancy pact, her friend, Ana Gutierrez. Ana hasn’t been seen or heard from in 20 years. Sawyer’s told that the Ames family took care of it, and Campbell seems to think that her family killed this girl and her unborn baby (who would be Campbell and Walker’s half-sibling).
This is the part where you look away if you don’t want this spoiled for you.
So Sawyer and Campbell are on a mission to find Ana. Lily’s trying to figure things out about her future. And Sadie-Grace is dealing with the fact that her step-mother, Greer (and the mastermind behind the pregnancy pact), is lying about being pregnant and her “due date” is slowly approaching. Sawyer and Campbell very easily find Victoria Gutierrez who is the daughter of Victor Gutierrez (who is Ana’s grandfather). Yes you read that correctly, she is Victor’s granddaughter, making 21-year-old Victoria her aunt (Ana’s like 38). Well that’s because Victor’s second wife (Victoria’s mom) is Ana’s age. So cringe. Well Sawyer and Campbell find Victoria because her family also summers (gross) at this lake resort and she also happens to be a leader in a super secret society of college aged former Debs, who have the added bonus of living life feeling powerless. But it’s all super convenient. And the 4 girls are tagged to go through the hazing/initiation processes which is where they get up to most of their shenanigans and sleuthing for the summer.
Then it comes out that JD is Sawyer’s dad, at the same time she discovers that JD has been having an affair with none other than Ana Gutierrez. So random and, again, convenient. Lily actually catches them in the act. Queue Lily’s spiral. Not only that but Ana’s being super shady about who she gave her baby up to, and 25 year old female remains have been found in the lake (originally the girls are told the bones are at least 2 decades old so they speculate the bones are Ana’s but then Ana turns up and the investigators are able to give a more accurate date on the bones), but it’s revealed that Olivia has known about JD’s affair, she knew he fathered Sawyer, and Olivia blackmailed JD into marrying her!
While these events are happening, there’s flash backs to 25 years ago, the summer before Olivia’s senior year, and shortly after her dad died. She’s going by “Liv” at this point, and she’s spending the day at the lake with Julia Ames, Charlotte (Sterling Ames’ future wife), JD, Sterling, and Thomas (Julia’s future husband). And that’s when you make the connection between that summer, the dead body, and JD being blackmailed for an “accident” he was involved in.
Again, these people. Then Greer “goes into labor” and Sadie and Sawyer follow her to a shady town over from their city where she’s assisting a girl, Beth, in giving birth (she’s there to buy the baby). Beth’s grandmother, Ellen, is the one organizing this hand off. Who’s Ellen you might ask, well she’s Lillian Taft’s identical twin sister she never mentioned to her kids or grandkids (Yeah, I know, insane!). That means Beth is Sawyer and Lily’s second cousin, who’s about to hand off their third cousin to Sadie-Grace’s stepmother to be raised as her half-brother. Like JESUS H CHRIST.
Ellen tells Sawyer to get out and never come back. Lillian tries to explain that her sister was too prideful and spiteful to ever accept Lillian’s help and that they haven’t seen one another in 40 years. But she did what she could to take care of her sister’s family (in typical Lillian fashion) from afar. Later Sawyer suspects that maybe Ellen might have placed Ana’s baby with a family. And though Victoria tries to help, they reach a dead end. They even get Ana to come home finally to see if maybe she’ll talk once she’s welcomed back by Victor, but as soon as Ana walks up to him, he keels over and dies (I mean he was 80 and he just had the shock of his life). And Ana inherits a ridiculous amount of money. Which is why she sold her baby, so she could have money.
It’s discovered that 25 years ago, JD, Charlotte, and Sterling accidentally kill Liv Taft after an argument. And she was replaced by her nearly identical cousin, Kaci, who’s Ellen’s daughter. The group cover up her death and say Liv ran away and Kaci took this time to become Liv (she’s been watching the Taft family for years trying to find a way to introduce herself). None of the group can expose her without getting themselves in trouble for Liv’s death. So she gets JD to marry her. And when she discovers that he slept with Ellie and got her pregnant, she realizes JD will leave her. So she lies and says she’s pregnant, goes to Ellen for a baby, and Ana gives her baby to Ellen. She finds out a decade later who the baby went to, and tells JD the truth, and he pays her off (which is what she’s after) to keep from revealing the truth to his daughter. Years of paying her off some how turned into an affair. This was absolute batshit crazy. And Lillian found out the truth a few months prior about Olivia.
This is all revealed after Olivia/Kaci drugs and kidnaps Sawyer and Sadie-Grace when they come to Ellen for answers about Ana’s baby. Olivia nearly kills Sawyer, Sadie-Grace, Campbell, and Victoria when they’re all there to witness this crazy story. Victoria even says “Who ARE you people?”, like girl, for real. But Olivia doesn’t kill them because Lillian comes and forgives her and sees her as her daughter since for the last 25 years, she’s been her daughter. This is all fine and dandy (I guess), but if Lily is Ana’s daughter, that means she’s also Sterling Ames’ daughter which makes her the half-sister of Campbell and Walker. Walker who she’s dated and is still kind of in love with. But it’s fine, because Walker reveals that his mother (Charlotte) told him he’s not Sterling’s son. So another convenient situation to avoid a crisis situation that would’ve been incest.
Who’s Walker’s father? What happens between Lily and Walker? What happened to Hope? What happened to JD? Is John David okay emotionally? Do Lillian and Davis ever hook up? These are the questions that will never be answered.
When Sawyer tells Lily about her parentage, they decide to run away together and back to Sawyer’s hometown and Ellie (groans). They live in a crappy one bedroom for 4 months before they go back home and accept Lily’s situation and continue to pretend that Kaci is Olivia for forever? Honesty, it’s a mess.
All this is happening and Lily’s still spiraling and Sawyer is struggling with not becoming like her mother. She actively refuses to grow too attached or fall in love. Which is a shame since she’s fallen into a situationship with Nick (from the first book) and they actually have decent chemistry. Like not a whole lot of chemistry, because romance is not the focus of these books, but enough where I could kind of see it. But I’m not a huge fan of Nick’s since he knows that Sawyer’s life isn’t normal but he expects her to be with him. I mean he gives her an ultimatum, like not okay. She’ll eventually realize she can chance her heart even if it’s not with Nick and her bond with Lily becomes even stronger.
So that’s all to say that Campbell and Walker are half-siblings. Campbell and Lily are half-sisters but Walker and Lily are not related at all (phew). This means that Campbell and Lily are Boone’s cousins, but Walker is not. Ana and Sterling are Lily’s biological parents, making Victoria her great aunt, Victor her great grandfather, she’s Davis’ granddaughter. JD is Sawyer’s and John David’s father so they are half-siblings, but Lily and Sawyer have no biological relation. Genetically, Liv and Kaci are siblings, so that still makes Kaci Sawyer’s aunt and John David is also her cousin. Sadie-Grace’s new sibling has no blood relation to her but is Sawyer’s third cousin (genetically her second cousin) and John David’s great nephew. And honestly depending on who Walker’s dad is, he could be related to Boone or Sadie-Grace or Sawyer.
Okay and we’re back. Now my thoughts.
This was a wild ride that’s totally not realistic but I don’t care because I LIVE for the drama and the teenage non-existent self preservation that Sawyer has. Like she puts herself in such dangerous situations, it was incredible.
I LOVE Lily and Sawyer’s relationship and their friendship with Sadie-Grace and Campbell. Like Sadie-Grace is off her rocker, but I love her. She kind of reminds me of Luna Lovegood.
I still hate that Ellie is forgiven. She’s still a shit mom (though the drama she started with Greer and JD in public was *chef’s kiss*) and toxic as hell. But I digress.
I also didn’t like that Barnes made Ana half-Swedish. It didn’t really make sense other than using it to explain how Ana be able to hide the baby within this kind of society (which is predominantly white). There aren’t really any people of color in this book and she like whitewashed two of the three persons of color by doing this. I’m not sure if she just did this randomly or she did it to explain how Ana’s child would be fair-skinned and could be passed off as the child of a white, blonde haired, blue-eyed couple. But Latinos come in all shades AND the baby’s father is white. So there was no need to “explain” why Ana is so fair because she’s half whitest of whites.
There’s so many unanswered questions and it’s all so over the top, but I think it’s great and a lot of fun. This gets 4 stars on just being dramatic, soap opera-esque entertainment on its own. Like surprise baby daddies AND baby mamas? EVIL TWINS? A teenage summer time cold case?? Like Jesus. I love it.
So if you read the first one (please do that first—this review and this book won’t make sense without reading book one) you know Sawyer and the whole Taft family. Well now it’s summer time and the family is heading to the lake house! At this point, you know that Sawyer is a product of a teenage pregnancy pact and the outcome of her mother (Ellie) sleeping with her brother-in-law (JD) who was 23 at the time and Ellie was 17. Sawyer isn’t able to tell her cousin (Lily) the truth about sharing a dad. Sawyer struggles with this secret for about a quarter of the book. But her main focus is finding out what happened to the other participant in Ellie’s pregnancy pact, her friend, Ana Gutierrez. Ana hasn’t been seen or heard from in 20 years. Sawyer’s told that the Ames family took care of it, and Campbell seems to think that her family killed this girl and her unborn baby (who would be Campbell and Walker’s half-sibling).
This is the part where you look away if you don’t want this spoiled for you.
So Sawyer and Campbell are on a mission to find Ana. Lily’s trying to figure things out about her future. And Sadie-Grace is dealing with the fact that her step-mother, Greer (and the mastermind behind the pregnancy pact), is lying about being pregnant and her “due date” is slowly approaching. Sawyer and Campbell very easily find Victoria Gutierrez who is the daughter of Victor Gutierrez (who is Ana’s grandfather). Yes you read that correctly, she is Victor’s granddaughter, making 21-year-old Victoria her aunt (Ana’s like 38). Well that’s because Victor’s second wife (Victoria’s mom) is Ana’s age. So cringe. Well Sawyer and Campbell find Victoria because her family also summers (gross) at this lake resort and she also happens to be a leader in a super secret society of college aged former Debs, who have the added bonus of living life feeling powerless. But it’s all super convenient. And the 4 girls are tagged to go through the hazing/initiation processes which is where they get up to most of their shenanigans and sleuthing for the summer.
Then it comes out that JD is Sawyer’s dad, at the same time she discovers that JD has been having an affair with none other than Ana Gutierrez. So random and, again, convenient. Lily actually catches them in the act. Queue Lily’s spiral. Not only that but Ana’s being super shady about who she gave her baby up to, and 25 year old female remains have been found in the lake (originally the girls are told the bones are at least 2 decades old so they speculate the bones are Ana’s but then Ana turns up and the investigators are able to give a more accurate date on the bones), but it’s revealed that Olivia has known about JD’s affair, she knew he fathered Sawyer, and Olivia blackmailed JD into marrying her!
While these events are happening, there’s flash backs to 25 years ago, the summer before Olivia’s senior year, and shortly after her dad died. She’s going by “Liv” at this point, and she’s spending the day at the lake with Julia Ames, Charlotte (Sterling Ames’ future wife), JD, Sterling, and Thomas (Julia’s future husband). And that’s when you make the connection between that summer, the dead body, and JD being blackmailed for an “accident” he was involved in.
Again, these people. Then Greer “goes into labor” and Sadie and Sawyer follow her to a shady town over from their city where she’s assisting a girl, Beth, in giving birth (she’s there to buy the baby). Beth’s grandmother, Ellen, is the one organizing this hand off. Who’s Ellen you might ask, well she’s Lillian Taft’s identical twin sister she never mentioned to her kids or grandkids (Yeah, I know, insane!). That means Beth is Sawyer and Lily’s second cousin, who’s about to hand off their third cousin to Sadie-Grace’s stepmother to be raised as her half-brother. Like JESUS H CHRIST.
Ellen tells Sawyer to get out and never come back. Lillian tries to explain that her sister was too prideful and spiteful to ever accept Lillian’s help and that they haven’t seen one another in 40 years. But she did what she could to take care of her sister’s family (in typical Lillian fashion) from afar. Later Sawyer suspects that maybe Ellen might have placed Ana’s baby with a family. And though Victoria tries to help, they reach a dead end. They even get Ana to come home finally to see if maybe she’ll talk once she’s welcomed back by Victor, but as soon as Ana walks up to him, he keels over and dies (I mean he was 80 and he just had the shock of his life). And Ana inherits a ridiculous amount of money. Which is why she sold her baby, so she could have money.
It’s discovered that 25 years ago, JD, Charlotte, and Sterling accidentally kill Liv Taft after an argument. And she was replaced by her nearly identical cousin, Kaci, who’s Ellen’s daughter. The group cover up her death and say Liv ran away and Kaci took this time to become Liv (she’s been watching the Taft family for years trying to find a way to introduce herself). None of the group can expose her without getting themselves in trouble for Liv’s death. So she gets JD to marry her. And when she discovers that he slept with Ellie and got her pregnant, she realizes JD will leave her. So she lies and says she’s pregnant, goes to Ellen for a baby, and Ana gives her baby to Ellen. She finds out a decade later who the baby went to, and tells JD the truth, and he pays her off (which is what she’s after) to keep from revealing the truth to his daughter. Years of paying her off some how turned into an affair. This was absolute batshit crazy. And Lillian found out the truth a few months prior about Olivia.
This is all revealed after Olivia/Kaci drugs and kidnaps Sawyer and Sadie-Grace when they come to Ellen for answers about Ana’s baby. Olivia nearly kills Sawyer, Sadie-Grace, Campbell, and Victoria when they’re all there to witness this crazy story. Victoria even says “Who ARE you people?”, like girl, for real. But Olivia doesn’t kill them because Lillian comes and forgives her and sees her as her daughter since for the last 25 years, she’s been her daughter. This is all fine and dandy (I guess), but if Lily is Ana’s daughter, that means she’s also Sterling Ames’ daughter which makes her the half-sister of Campbell and Walker. Walker who she’s dated and is still kind of in love with. But it’s fine, because Walker reveals that his mother (Charlotte) told him he’s not Sterling’s son. So another convenient situation to avoid a crisis situation that would’ve been incest.
Who’s Walker’s father? What happens between Lily and Walker? What happened to Hope? What happened to JD? Is John David okay emotionally? Do Lillian and Davis ever hook up? These are the questions that will never be answered.
When Sawyer tells Lily about her parentage, they decide to run away together and back to Sawyer’s hometown and Ellie (groans). They live in a crappy one bedroom for 4 months before they go back home and accept Lily’s situation and continue to pretend that Kaci is Olivia for forever? Honesty, it’s a mess.
All this is happening and Lily’s still spiraling and Sawyer is struggling with not becoming like her mother. She actively refuses to grow too attached or fall in love. Which is a shame since she’s fallen into a situationship with Nick (from the first book) and they actually have decent chemistry. Like not a whole lot of chemistry, because romance is not the focus of these books, but enough where I could kind of see it. But I’m not a huge fan of Nick’s since he knows that Sawyer’s life isn’t normal but he expects her to be with him. I mean he gives her an ultimatum, like not okay. She’ll eventually realize she can chance her heart even if it’s not with Nick and her bond with Lily becomes even stronger.
So that’s all to say that Campbell and Walker are half-siblings. Campbell and Lily are half-sisters but Walker and Lily are not related at all (phew). This means that Campbell and Lily are Boone’s cousins, but Walker is not. Ana and Sterling are Lily’s biological parents, making Victoria her great aunt, Victor her great grandfather, she’s Davis’ granddaughter. JD is Sawyer’s and John David’s father so they are half-siblings, but Lily and Sawyer have no biological relation. Genetically, Liv and Kaci are siblings, so that still makes Kaci Sawyer’s aunt and John David is also her cousin. Sadie-Grace’s new sibling has no blood relation to her but is Sawyer’s third cousin (genetically her second cousin) and John David’s great nephew. And honestly depending on who Walker’s dad is, he could be related to Boone or Sadie-Grace or Sawyer.
Okay and we’re back. Now my thoughts.
This was a wild ride that’s totally not realistic but I don’t care because I LIVE for the drama and the teenage non-existent self preservation that Sawyer has. Like she puts herself in such dangerous situations, it was incredible.
I LOVE Lily and Sawyer’s relationship and their friendship with Sadie-Grace and Campbell. Like Sadie-Grace is off her rocker, but I love her. She kind of reminds me of Luna Lovegood.
I still hate that Ellie is forgiven. She’s still a shit mom (though the drama she started with Greer and JD in public was *chef’s kiss*) and toxic as hell. But I digress.
I also didn’t like that Barnes made Ana half-Swedish. It didn’t really make sense other than using it to explain how Ana be able to hide the baby within this kind of society (which is predominantly white). There aren’t really any people of color in this book and she like whitewashed two of the three persons of color by doing this. I’m not sure if she just did this randomly or she did it to explain how Ana’s child would be fair-skinned and could be passed off as the child of a white, blonde haired, blue-eyed couple. But Latinos come in all shades AND the baby’s father is white. So there was no need to “explain” why Ana is so fair because she’s half whitest of whites.
There’s so many unanswered questions and it’s all so over the top, but I think it’s great and a lot of fun. This gets 4 stars on just being dramatic, soap opera-esque entertainment on its own. Like surprise baby daddies AND baby mamas? EVIL TWINS? A teenage summer time cold case?? Like Jesus. I love it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: Child death, Gun violence, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, Murder, Toxic friendship, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, and Death
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