I was sent a copy of It Ends With You by S. K. Wright to read and review by NetGalley. This YA novel was quite good, moving between viewpoints of all the different characters concerned in named chapters. This formula provides plenty of twists and turns which include the murdered Eva’s own words in her diary entries. However, even though the story was set in Wimbledon in London the book had a slightly American feel about it. Whether this was a purposeful foil by the author to appeal to a young audience or a complete accident I couldn’t say, although I found it a bit lacking having been somehow homogenised – it could basically have been set anywhere. I’m sure many readers will think that this is a good thing but perhaps I’m too old school (or just too old) as I do like a to have a real sense of place in a novel. I have rated this book with 3 stars because I personally don’t think it quite warrants 4… 3½ would have been my optimum choice. I am sure that younger readers than me (I am by no means a young adult!) will find this book compelling and it is a good easy read.

The constant jumps in POV character are quite jarring. The story is told from so many different perspectives, I'm not even sure how many different POV characters we had in the end. One of them gets barely a couple of lines in. Another one gets a single chapter. The main suspect, Luke, gets the most, including several consecutive chapters, to build pace and suspense I think. Then there's the format changes. We get first person narratives. We get letters between characters. We get blogs and WhatsApp messages and Facebook comments and YouTube videos. The constant shift in narrative style is clearly intended as a kind of mass-media storytelling but frankly it got a bit tiresome before too long. The characters are all awful! Everyone is lying about everything from the very beginning, more concerned with protecting themselves than finding a murderer. The only exception to that is maybe Carolina, who flip-flops constantly in her loyalties, despite her determination to be a great detective she's a blatant victim of her own, ever changing, biases. It was hard to feel any sympathy for either Eva, the manipulative, game-playing victim, or Luke, the angry main protagonist, who was trying to overcome the prejudices the world apparently had against him (though as he seemed to be part of the in-crowd it's hard to see exactly what they were) but gave in to a violent temper at the slightest provocation. The investigating officer is completely dreadful, the teachers not much better, and the rest of the class mates are vacuous and empty-headed. For all the attempts at narrative cleverness, the plot has no satisfying resolution at all. We think we know who was responsible, revealed perhaps in a long epilogue, but for no reason that I could see. Character motivation is not something indulged in here. The trial is shortened to a serious of character statements, with no mention at all about serious and significant police failings that should have had any other case thrown out of court. Oh, and I'm not even going to get started with the "You've hit 3 million vlog followers, so here's a publishing contract. Your book is coming out in 4 months" or a bird watcher wanting to go to the Outer Hebrides to see kestrels. Yikes! It Ends With You tries for clever and complex storytelling. Unfortunately it ends with disappointment.