
How We Fall Apart
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Narrated by:
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Natalie Naudus
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By:
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Katie Zhao
About this listen
In a YA thriller that is Crazy Rich Asians meets One of Us is Lying, students at an elite prep school are forced to confront their secrets when their ex-best friend turns up dead.
Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends—Krystal, Akil, and Alexander—are the prime suspects, thanks to "the Proctor," someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.
They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow the Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.
Katie Zhao’s YA debut is an edge-of-your-seat drama set in the pressure-cooker world of academics and image at Sinclair Prep, where the past threatens the future these teens have carefully crafted for themselves. How We Fall Apart is the irresistible, addicting, Asian-American recast of Gossip Girl that we’ve all been waiting for.©2021 Katie Zhao (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Great characters and thrilling throughout!
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Amazing!!!
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series???
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Katie Zhou’s crisp, tension-filled writing makes HOW WE FALL APART a very readable mystery and psychological thriller (not a thriller-thriller).
Nancy, though sympathetic, was difficult to root for as she made bad decision after bad decision, though at times her heart was in the right place. Most of the characters lacked depth and nuance, not a decent one in the bunch though some had redeeming qualities. Worse than the characters were their parents, willing to forgo their children’s happiness for the American Dream. I know that non-white immigrants have many added stressors and burdens, but I don’t think that ought to make all their parents relentless tyrants without empathy.
A few reasons for me not giving HOW WE FALL APART five stars, as much as I enjoyed the book.
Eric, who graduated two years ago was NOT a teacher or a student teacher at one of the most exclusive schools in the country. One year of college *might* get him a teacher aid job (meaning in the classroom with a real teacher). No school would risk hiring a “teacher” who was classmates with kids still at the school, no matter how rich his parents.
The other part was the school seemed to lack white legacy kids whose ancestors had attended the school since it’s founding. I don’t need white kids in a story, but having a few, even if they were mentions and not actual characters would have made this centuries old school more believable. If Zhou didn’t want go that route, a newer school founded by immigrants that exceeded all the white founded (likely built by slaves) schools would have made more sense to me. I’d never take off a star for a detail like this, it’s just a place my mind kept going.
The experience of reading HOW WE FALL APART was fun and I never lost interest. I hope there’s a second book in what looks like a series.
Delicious
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Not for me
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I’m sorry.
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