Overall:  This book takes place at an elite High School in the Colorado Mountains full of rich, spoiled kids and their snobby, entitled parents.  However, the main character, Natalie is an artist and is not rich.   She just recently moved to the town to help her brother recover after an accident.  She walks his dog and keeps him company while he heals.  She works at the fancy school’s front office as an administrative assistant.  The schools Head Coach of soccer, Nick is fit, handsome, and very popular with all the school’s moms.  One mom who is very interested in Nick is Brooke, a bakery goods heiress, who is also is the mother of soccer star
daughter Sloane.   Another of the school’s female soccer stars is Mia, who’s mom Asha is worried her rich husband is probably cheating on her.  Surprisingly, Coach Nick starts dating young Natalie instead of any of the rich, pampered moms who flirt with him.  The school’s moms are all fake friends who pretend to get along socially.  The daughters are behaving badly and engaging in risky behaviors, while also trying to get into good colleges.  One day Natalie wakes up in her car parked outside of the school.  Inside of the school, a body lies in a pool of blood.  Who is dead?  Who killed them, when, and why?  Why did Natalie black out in her car?  These are the things we are trying to figure out as things are not always as they seam among the rich and privileged.        

Ovations: The story and characters are all compelling.  All the characters are interesting in their own ways.  I did figure out who was dead ahead of time, but not how or why it happened.  Plus, there is a twist to the story that I did not see coming.  The book is like a Lifetime Movie or like the tv show Big Little Lies.  If you like stories about the lives of privileged, rich people behaving badly, then this book is totally for you. 

Oh Well:  This book is listed as a thriller / mystery.  I would not call it a thriller at all.  The book is very slowly paced.  It unravels bit by bit, taking it’s time.  It is
technically a mystery, as you do not know who dies or how, until the end.  However, it is not like a mystery you are trying to actively solve…..like an Agatha Christie with clues.  This book is just more of a story where everyone has secrets and is just managing to hold their lives together, even though everything looks perfect from the outside.  But, then someone is murdered.  The book is just sort of the explanation and backstory as to why that murder happened.   

Opinion: Not enough happened in this book to really hold my interest all throughout.  It was too slowly paced.  But, the plot made sense and there were no holes in it.  I also did not guess what the ending was going to be.  This book was not a thriller and barely a murder mystery, so if you are looking for either of those, this is not the book for you.  But, if you like the setting of people with scandals and secrets at an elite high school in the exclusive, wealthy, Colorado suburbs, then you would enjoy this book.  Rating 5 out of 10