Scandal

The overall story, important themes and characters worked well, but the writing, especially the repeated use of obvious twists (<spoiler>Zach is going to kill himself, nope!; Bobo is going to help them hurt Amat, nope!; David hates gay people, nope!; etc. The shotgun introduced at the start worked well since there was a long time before the setup and twist. I was fairly convinced from the rape until the hints about his future that Benji was going to kill Kevin since the investigation was clearly going to lack evidence and most other characters had their futures hinted at earlier.</spoiler>) and the unnecessary “deep insights” at the end of each section, let it down. The “insights” felt like the author didn't trust me to take the correct message from a passage and had to explicitly tell me how to think. The best thing I can say about it, and it truly is a great aspect of the book, is how effectively it made me shout (not always internally) at the characters for not doing the right thing when it seems so obvious, only to give it a moment's thought and realise how they can't given their situation and how this is so obviously true in reality.