Thought Train to Pusan

I can’t remember where I heard about this book or why I jotted it down on the ever-expanding list of books to read that is constantly being updated in my phone. But then I happened upon it at the library while looking for something else and said, well there had to have been a reason I wanted to remember it for later, right? Turns out my intuition was wrong this time, as this was not an enjoyable one in my opinion. It’s funny, I actually started this novel immediately after finishing the graphic novel, Skim, and found a few coincidental similarities in the plot points: lonely girl in a small town, girl trying out new identities, friends that may actually be more toxic than good for you, small town rattled by a teen boy’s suicide, girlfriend of the deceased is queen bee of the school but may in fact be more than she appears to be, etc. But let me be frank when I say that beyond these surface similarities, they were very different books with drastically different tones. Girl...