Plain Bad Heroines

This book is not good. It has good portions, but, overall, it desperately needs a better editor with a chainsaw and a friend who can tell the author that she's not nearly as clever as she thinks she is.

There are two timelines of the book: old and new.
The old timeline is best, and most neglected, section of the book. But it builds and then fizzles, so another disappointment.

The new timeline is, uh, not good. It doesn't even build; it's just disappointing the whole way. Sixty percent of it is absolutely useless that leads nowhere. You'd think it'd be groundwork for character development, but nope! Turns out none of the named people are actual characters anyway. One character, Harper, has one personality trait: being cool. Another, Merritt, has one personality trait: insufferable (like if Tumblr was a person, and not in a good way). The last, Audrey, is simply there. But we're supposed to believe that any character cares about any of the other? Like, I can see where Danforth TRIES to show chemistry between characters, but she ends up writing the most soulless, bland conversation. Like, saying the words, “they were flirting,” does not actually mean that they were flirting if it sounds like two omega simulators were talking.

And the author has an annoying habit of just having characters say things that the author wants to be, rather than them actually be true. Having two actors get together to gauge chemistry isn't weird. It happens all the time. But you have a character say “this is weird,” presumably to set some sort of mood, but it's factually not true, and you just leave it for the reader to blindly believe. Like, Emily, you just overwrote this book by 400 pages! You can't add in one paragraph to explain why something is weird, rather than just say “this is weird”?