Cracks

I want to rate it higher because of the things I did like about it, but the aspects I didn't like make it impossible for me to do so.

I do have to say that I loved the cultish/hivemind writing style. I like that it's written in a way where you're not sure who the narrator is, and it gives off the feeling that the book is written by a group of girls who act as one. That's probably the only thing that I liked about this.

But the problems are huge:

There is no explanation for why the girls were obsessed with Miss G; there's no background for why this is, especially when she's written to be so abusive. Her only redeeming quality is that she allowed the girls to break rules.

Fiamma is entirely flat as a character, which could be functional but comes off feeling as if they hate her for no reason other than she's new (and not engaging with that).

They're glorifying rape and abuse. Somehow, none of the girls even remotely question what Miss G is doing to her students; they just automatically feel envious of her attention toward Fiamma (thus inflaming point 2).

Fuzzie is the one character in the book who could be sympathetic toward Fiamma, but she's written as being mentally unwell (she's "always confused" as a teenager, she comes from a family that has suicide/mental illness, she's spent time in an asylum). That's massively uncomfortable.

The author wrote herself into her book? Like, I was massively thrown off when 'Sheila Kohler' existed as a character (who, shockingly, becomes an author! Who knew).

I'm not sure how this is like Lord of the Flies (as it was sold by the book's cover) unless you think that novel was 100% just "group of boys torture and kill one," which it wasn't.

If there were more discussion about the problematic aspects of the book, where the girls didn't directly kill Fiamma (for no functioning reason), where they discussed how women like Miss G are a problem and how the girls recognised that they misread the situation and ohgod! What have we done? I could have liked this book.