Followers

To tweet or not to tweet... what a deadly question.

When Briana loses out on a starring role in the school's production of Hamlet, she reluctantly agrees to be the drama department's "social media director" and starts tweeting half-hearted updates. She barely has any followers, so when someone hacks her twitter account, Briana can't muster the energy to stop it. After all, tweets like "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark... and a body's rotting in the theater" are obviously a joke.

But then a body IS discovered in the theater: Briana's rival. Suddenly, what seemed like a prank turns deadly serious. To everyone's horror, the grisly tweets continue... and the body count starts to rise.

There's no other explaination; someone is live-tweeting murders on campus.

With the school in chaos and the police unable to find the culprit, it's up to Briana to unmask the psycho-tweeter before the carnage reaches Shakespearian proportions... or she becomes the next victim.
from goodreads.com

Beth says 2 Stars...
As a high school theater kid and someone who still loves plays, I was super excited to read this book.  Taking the backdrop of a production of Hamlet and putting a social media twist on it is quite clever.  Shakespearian tragedy blends the ordinary with the epic, potentially providing a nice foil for the action going on in the world of the novel.  Unfortunately, the plot didn't live up to the set up.  Although it was meant to feel high-stakes, I couldn't muster up the energy to feel strongly about the murders.  The live-tweeting bit in the summary is misleading, because the murders are merely foreshadowed rather than graphically described.  The mystery wasn't that enthralling either.  I expected more murders, more drama, and just more interest.  The pacing felt weird, with Bree serving as a roadblock to the resolution of the action rather than helpling things forward.

I must confess that I thoroughly loathed Bree/Briana as the main character.  I understand wanting flaws in a character to make him or her relatable, but Bree was just annoying.  She wouldn't listen to anyone and thought that her ideas and instincts were always right.  While she did grow and develop by the end of the book, she still didn't turn into a compelling person.  The other characters were all totally flat and couldn't pick up the slack left by Bree's lack of an interesting personality.  The private school vs public school kids bit didn't help things feel fresh and new at all, something that could have been a saving grace.

Overall, don't bother with this one.  I wish I could recommend it based on the interesting idea and my desire to like it, but it wasn't to be.  Many things are rotten in this novel.
ebook from Netgalley