Book received though First Reads in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

So it starts with a neurotic, true-crime obsessed patron in a library... and I think to myself, damn! How does goodreads now that I am a library employee with a current obsession with cannibal killers? Then I think, well because I told goodreads, that's why. Anyway, narcissistic crazy patron is working on a crime novel and teaching.

She seems like a terrible person, but only in the way that we are all terrible people, sometimes. We are seeing her in one of her sometimes: a character with self-pity cloaked in self-depreciation filled with constant mild hostility. I don't know yet if reading this will be entertaining or irritating. Probably irritating. This particular kind of unlikable character is awfully trendy these days.

Update:
Hahaha, probably irritating is correct. Alas, after getting to know the characters the plot was kinda boring. ( )

85 pages in and I have yet to find one plot or character that I care about. I give up.

Vera Lundy, a frustrated crime writer, has taken a long-term substitute English teaching assignment at a prestigious private school. One of her students stands out, reminding Very of herself at that age. When another student is found murdered, Vera wonders how this crime is related to previous others, and finds herself immersed in the police’s attempts to solve these crimes. Compounding the investigation are wrongly accused, other disappearing students and coincidences. Fortunately, one of the guilty in an act of unselfishness confesses his part to the police and Vera, something I found totally unbelievable, as is much of this book. The only interesting parts actually concerned her insights into being a new teacher in a small school. The “shivery thriller” parts were so boring I would never recommend it for those parts. ( )

This is a psychological thriller with some mystery thrown in, centered around the character of Vera Lundy, a teacher who also wants to be a true crime writer. Vera's deep interest in true crime began when she was a child, and has led her to seek connections among recent murders of young girls.

Meanwhile, Vera is subbing in as an English teacher at a prestigious private girls' school, where she meets a girl named Jensen Willard, who continuously turns in long journal entries that have a troubling undertone. When tragedy hits Vera's classroom, she is forced to confront truths about her students and herself.

Vera comes across as a bit of a twisted Harriet the Spy, especially in regards to what we learn about her past. I actually wanted to learn more about these important events from when she was a teenager, as they seem fundamental to who she became as an adult. Vera herself even says she sometimes feels she is still the same fifteen year old girl on the inside. The past events are teased out, but I would have liked to see them fleshed out even more.

As a teacher myself, there were a lot of instances when I was grimacing at the choices Vera was making in regards to her class and her students. She desperately wanted to be "the cool teacher". But it made sense in the lens of what she went through as a teenager.

Watson does a great job with the slow burn. The story gradually builds until you realize you haven't put the book down in hours. The lines between fiction and truth begin to blur, and you're not sure what to believe anymore. I found the ending satisfying and fitting, though I know not all readers did. ( )

Vera Lundy is a long-term sub teacher in a private high school, teaching Catcher in the Rye to a group of moderately privileged millennials. She is obsessed with serial killers and trying to write a book about one particular case. She seems to attract what she's obsessed by: late at night after a drunken encounter with a stranger, she stumbles on the body of one of her classmates. Then, a student who has threatened suicide in her dark but brilliant class journals disappears.

I expected to enjoy this more than I did. It was fast and easy reading, and moderately suspenseful, but I didn't find it believable. The plot was contrived and the character of Vera felt like a type. It certainly is in vogue these days to write dark, hard-drinking, deeply flawed loner female protagonists. I like them, but it is definitely a trend and I'm suspicious of trends. ( )