Penance

Disturbing. Really accurately captures the extremely unhinged energy of tumblr dot com in the 2010s. If you were ever a teen on tumblr, and/or if you have ever had even a passing interest in true crime, highly recommend this book.

Not perfect and I wish the critique of true crime was more interesting/robust, and the final chapter felt kind of unnecessary or over done (you already know not to trust the embedded story's narrator without it being hammered in in the final chapter...or the reminder could have been done in a more clever way) but overall I enjoyed it. The embedded narration was constantly a reminder to question, and worked well. Also having a female author writing a male narrator who is in turn writing from the pov of teenage girls was really interesting. The critique of how men write about/talk about teenage girls was never stated but thoroughly embedded in the writing.