The Girls Are All So Nice Here

This story is told in two time frames – primarily it's a flashback to the year Amb and Sully, the main characters, were just beginning college, (although you'd never know it from how little attention is paid to studying, papers, tests, classes). Instead, for them, their first semester consisted primarily of an endless round of parties, drinking, drug use, and casual sex. Amb has a roommate Flora, whose high school boyfriend goes to a nearby university. When he comes to campus to visit her, Amb accidentally meets him without realizing his connection to said roommate and falls hard, jettisoning any consideration of Flora and her feelings and instead desperately trying to win him for herself. Within hours, she's made him a fairy-tale prince and imagines a happily-ever-after with him, out of all proportion to their brief encounter. Her obsession leads to a tragic event and now, at her ten-year college reunion, she's getting creepy emails that threaten to reveal her role in the tragedy that occurred. So it's one part whodunit (who's sending the emails, who's after revenge) and one part mean girls at college. For me, neither Amb nor her utterly without socially-redeeming qualities flamboyant best friend Sully were appealing – their behavior was over the top narcissistic and infantile, all they cared about was themselves, their popularity, and making themselves the center of every drama. And their “victim”, poor Flora? She was a stereotype – the virginal good girl who takes everyone at face value and never suspects a thing. While the writing style itself was well done, I felt the plot was tedious and repetitive and none of the major characters seemed realistic or fully fleshed out, but were instead quite superficial and one-note. I'm not opposed to unlikeable narrators but they need to be compelling and well-drawn. Help me understand why they behave the way they do, show me something positive even if it's that they're clever, or witty or had a lousy childhood. Otherwise, they're someone ordered up by central casting – compelling free spirit, low-esteem hanger-on, clueless boyfriend, the hopelessly handsome but hapless husband. Readers nowadays want more. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC.