The List has been on my TBR forever, and all of a sudden I was really in the mood to read it the other day. I wasn't sure what it was about, other than there being a list at these girls' school which lists the prettiest and ugliest girls from each year. And yeah, that's pretty much the entire plot.
I did like The List, but I sure didn't love it. My first problem being the eight points of view that the story is told from. We get the point of view of every girl who is on the list, and in my opinion it's too much. Each character got about three chapters of "screen-time", and it wasn't enough to really get to know them or bond with them. I had problems getting to know all of the characters, Candace in particular, even though she's the one who shows the most character growth.
Also, the book felt very incomplete, like it was a TV show that had been cancelled mid-season. It didn't even get a finale, in my opinion, it just sort of cut out after we learnt who made the list. (Their reasoning sucked, by the way.) I wanted to know more about each of the characters and how they were going to end up. None of them, aside from maybe Sarah and Danielle, got a decent finale. Their stories just weren't wrapped up well.
Another thing I needed to know more about was certain characters' motivations, like I mentioned above. Not only were the motivations of the person who made the list vague and shallow, Lauren's mother's motivations for keeping her out of school were too. I mean, I get that she thought high school was full of evil, but why was she that extreme? And what happened to her when she was younger? We just don't know.
Overall, The List is an incredibly average read that I can't recommend because there's not enough depth. It makes me wonder if Vivian had a larger hand in the atrocious ending of the otherwise terrific Burn for Burn trilogy, because that epilogue was a pile of poo that made no sense. No, I will not let go. Not ever.