Gilt Hollow

It was a little over the top but I suppose most YA thrillers are like that. Overall, it was an okay book. When I picked this up I desperately wanted to like it, I hoped it was good and sadly I'm left disappointed. The writing isn't terrible, the characters weren't intolerable - mostly overdone tropes, but the overall plot is what needs work. We don't really find out what's going on until the last 20 pages, and I mean that in a bad way. Typically in stories you're given enough hints to somewhat piece things together, but with this I felt like everything was dumped towards the end. Looking back at it, I can see how it makes sense but the reasoning for one of the deaths just isn't explored enough and felt like it was plopped in front of me just so there would be a reason to begin with. I found the “reveal” scene boring and hoped

Some of the characters were just there for convenience or filler - they ultimately served no purpose. Our main female character, Willow, was unbelievably stupid at times. The choices she made just didn't make sense to me, and she was way too trusting. Our “villain” was barely explored wish is what's really disappointing. I assumed that if there's a villain who's terrorizing our main characters and harming others, they'd be fleshed out and given traits but that's not the case in this book. I'm not sure how I feel about Ashton, I think he's great at times and annoying at other times ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It was well written and the characters weren't too bad but had the plot actually been really thought out and well planned (in regards to the end too), this would've been a great book. Sadly it's only a 3/5 for me.