How We Fall Apart

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When I slowly began to realise the plot wasn’t working for me, I was somewhat holding onto the characters, hoping they would carry the story on, but it felt like I was reading a story that wasn’t quite complete.

As I said this book looks like it is going to be a duology so we are left with quite an interesting ending which will take us into the next book in the series. As rumors spread that Jamie was murdered, an anonymous post on Tip Tap, the school's gossip app, from "The Proctor" points to Jamie's best friends--Nancy, Krystal Choi, Akil Patel, and Alexander Lin--as the prime suspects. While she may have an “accessible” voice, she is also an unreliable narrator and the person who competed most with Jamie, even being her closest “friend. I'll be honest I had to force myself a bit to finish it, I didn't like the style it was written in and the book itself felt immature.Nancy, Krystal, Akil, and Alexander find them terrified of their secrets coming out and the author slowly realises each of their secrets to keep you on edge through the book which leads to The Incident secret (a secret they were all involved in) finally coming to explosive ending. Nancy knows a full scholarship and perpetual class rank as second best isn't enough to make her truly belong at Sinclair Prep. I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while now but I wasn’t sure of what I was going to find in it, and now that I’ve read your input on it I’ll definitely give it a shot. HWFA is also about mental health and the stigma of mental illness, particularly in Asian (American) communities.

Nancy's story alternates between the past and present as she remembers how Jamie belittled her, instilled fear into her, and used her own good deeds to get Nancy to do whatever she wanted.Receiving a copy does not guarantee a positive review and therefore does not affect the opinion or content of the review.

If the Proctor makes good on their threats, Nancy and her friends could lose everything--including Nancy and Alexander's coveted scholarships. Having abandoned the friendship months before in light of her father’s scandal, Nancy finally thinks she can take the spot that Jamie once held over her. The novel is mainly told from Nancy’s lens, alternating between the present day and flashbacks of her interactions with Jamie when they were once friends. Zhao's plotting is unrivaled as every single thread in this story proves to be crucial to the larger plot while also leaving just enough seeds to justify a second book.I was a freshman in high school eight years ago (holy shiz 😬), but there are things that I remember like it was yesterday. I’ve been disappointed a lot reading books that I’ve personally been hyped to read, but How We Fall Apart is one of those reads that it pains me to say that I would not recommend this book to anyone. The formatting is fitting of the dark academia theme, with each chapter beginning with a confession, ranging from general school gossip to moments we can all relate to like finals and AP exams. The "incident" seemed to play out too conveniently to be realistic and the secrets exposed on the gossip app seemed almost glossed over? Someone name The Proctor on the school social media annouces Jamie's death and points to Nancy and her three friends Krystal, Akil, and Alexander as suspects.