Review of The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight

Imagine if you could see inside the minds of everyone around you – your best friend, your boyfriend, your enemies…? Imagine how valuable you'd be… Imagine how much danger you'd be in… Imagine being an Outlier.

Wylie hasn't heard from her best friend, Cassie, since their fight. That doesn't matter when she gets a text from her, asking for help. But as Cassie's messages become increasingly strange, Wylie has a growing sense that something is REALLY wrong. What isn't Cassie telling her? And could finding her be just the beginning?

-----------------------------------

I was absolutely convinced that by the mid way point of this book, I would have thrown it in a corner, never to be read again. The amount of infodumping we have to go through for 150 pages with the plot moving at a snail's pace inbetween, was enough to make me want to scream. However, we suddenly hit a turning point of this book which made it go from a infodumping, poorly written slog to a heart pounding sci-fi novel novel that constantly kept me guessing. And it all started with this line:

"Boom, boom, boom, goes my heart as I push my hand one last time, deep into the center of the car seat. And inside, I do not find the warm body of a baby. But i do not find a cold baby either. Inside, I find nothing at all."

I really enjoyed the depiction of mental health. I lost my mother when I was Wylie's age, the same as Wylie and I know that it completely shifts the world around you and makes you do some pretty crazy things. I went with holing myself up in my room for months, not washing and binge watching Buffy over and over and over. Wylie did pretty much the same, only with a drastic hair cut.

This story is a little... fantastical but I'm always willing to give fiction a little more leeway in favour of a good story, especially one like this that kept me guessing. I can't even make a single guess about what will happen in the future books but I can't wait to read them - this one ended on cliffhanger.