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I can't think of anything in particular this is ripping off, other than maybe Mean Girls. But I still feel like I've seen all these ideas a hundred times. There's just a lack of anything original here.

Stewart is a pretty inventive, interesting writer. This isn't blowing me away or anything, but I'm having fun with it. The story is genuinely unpredictable, which isn't something you get a lot from MG books.

It's way too obvious that this is all set-up for a Christmas Carol-style redemption arc. Sam and her friends are almost too awful to be real - I don't believe that Sam can genuinely have no problems in her life the way Oliver wants me to. Even shitty people suffer, and Oliver doesn't get that.

Also, fun drinking game: take a shot every time Oliver interrupts the action to give unimportant background information.

Maybe I'm the weird one. Maybe I go to a weird high school unlike any other on earth, and that's why I keep seeing portrayals of popularity in high school that strike me as completely unrealistic, and nobody else seems to complain about them. Maybe I'm just not the target audience for this book.

I'm glad to see that Summers does what I judge to be a pretty fair analysis of Nixon's role in the peace talks of 1968. It makes me think that maybe he hasn't been as harsh toward Nixon as I'd initially thought - maybe Nixon really was that awful.

This is way too broad. It's basically a series of barely-connected essays about topics that interest Diamond. And a lot of them interest me too, it's just... too much.

Well, this is strange. I'm anticipating a big twist later in the story, and I'm just hoping the twist is satisfying. I'll say this: I don't see what this could possibly be leading up to. So whatever the twist is, it'll probably surprise me.

God, this book is pretentious and self-indulgent. I honestly have trouble believing this is the same person who wrote V for Vendetta and Watchmen. The themes and style are kinda similar, don't get me wrong, but those books are just SO MUCH BETTER.

I think my only big problem with this book so far is that it's kind of pretentious and elitist. I'm kind of wary about books where the heroes are the only enlightened ones surrounded by manipulated sheep; it makes for a mean-spirited read.

I think I've been giving the impression that I hate this book, and I don't. It's actually very interesting, there's a lot of cool information. I just have a lot of problems with how it presents Nixon as evil because he was mentally unstable. I like this book better when it focuses on his corruption and abuse of his wife, because then, I actually do believe that Nixon was a terrible person.

I kind of wish this book were better-organized. Like, maybe divided into sections, and the chapters given titles? Or at very least, I wish it went strictly chronologically, rather than covering topic by topic.

Alan Moore writing about a sex addict is possibly the greatest example of all time of an author resting on what they're used to and refusing to expand themselves. I hate this book.

At first, I thought I might like the section about the witches being burnt - it's at least a good idea for a short story. But the ridiculously excessive sex and horror ruined most of my enjoyment. When I read V for Vendetta and Watchmen, I didn't realize how restrained they were - Alan Moore unrestrained is unberable.

This is... weirdly pro-Castro. I mean, yes, the CIA overthrowing foreign governments was starting to become a huge problem around this time, and it remains so to this day, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every government they overthrew was good. It's odd that Summers paints Nixon's determination to kill Castro as a personal grudge, rather than a part of American imperialism.

The boring prose makes following the story a chore, so at times, I'm just not bothering to keep track of what's going on. Based on what I am getting, I don't think I'm missing very much.

That was NOT EVEN REMOTELY set up. There were two big reveals in the last section I read, and neither of them make any sense. It's like Simone suddenly became a completely different person. I said that the plot worked pretty well before, but I'm completely taking it back - this is one of the biggest shocking swerves I've ever read.

I wonder if I would appreciate this more if I had already read something about Nixon, so I could get an idea of how much or little Summers is leaving out. I just can't shake the impression that literally everything Summers says is there to paint Nixon as neurotic and evil.

I find it amazing that this is a murder mystery that somehow manages to make everybody look incredibly petty. Even when they're talking about the death, every single character comes off as a passive-aggressive douche bag.

Also, it's rare that bad dialogue totally ruins a book, but seriously, this story could've been good, and the dialogue is making it unbearable.

This frames itself as a showing the truth behind true crime shows like Dateline. But while it does do a good job of expanding on the circumstances of becoming a public figure after being accused of a crime, it doesn't totally work because all of the characters are shallowly-developed douche bags. I don't feel like I can relate to people in Jill's circumstance, because Jill isn't a very human or relatable character.

Why are the Italian detectives actively evil? Like, they aren't just incompetent or corrupt, they're actively happy to see Jill in physical pain. It's a weird choice - it would almost definitely have been more effective to portray them as people doing their jobs, in a reasonable way given the circumstances.

Also, why are Jill and Anna supposed to have a deep connection? This is never established!

There's some subtle homophobia here, with the way Summers goes out of his way to highlight someone's sexual orientation in unflattering descriptions of them. Howard Hughes would be shitty whether or not he was bisexual, and the fact that Summers felt the need to mention this fact is troubling.

Seriously, there is no way Summers isn't giving the Democrats way more credit than they deserve. I believe that Nixon was corrupt, but I don't believe he was unusually corrupt for the time period. (Seriously, just read up on LBJ if you don't believe me.) Moreover, the fact that Nixon's corruption never seems to harm anyone except political opponents gives it much less weight.

I can't decide if the way the plot unfolds is really clever, or just forced. But to be honest, even if it is forced, when you consider how much of a trainwreck the rest of this book is, the plot is easily the aspect that works the best.

I cannot describe to you how overwritten and boring this book is.

I wonder what a biography of Nixon would look like if it wasn't actively trying to tear down his legacy. I don't doubt that what Summers says here is true, but I wonder about what he's leaving out. I also find it interesting that he hasn't shown much of Nixon's corruption actually hurting people, other than political rivals. It's an odd choice, considering that Nixon ordered things like the Cambodia bombing.

I don't know how realistic the details about this case becoming famous are, but they don't FEEL real. The improbable things aren't properly lampshaded, so even if it's totally plausible, it breaks my suspension of disbelief. I just do not understand why this case got so ridiculously famous, and Cook doesn't seem to realize it's hard for audiences to buy.

I know that Summers has to include information about Nixon's mental health, but I can't shake the impression that I'm supposed to think less of Nixon because he saw an analyst. Which I don't - there are plenty of other reasons to hate him. This book seems to be made to destroy Nixon's legacy to the family values crowd more than anything else, and that just doesn't appeal to me.

This is not as good as I remember it, but it's still well-written and better than people give it credit for.

The first half of this book was a lot stronger than the second half. There's kind of a lack of forward momentum here, whereas the first half was distinctly building up to something. This is still pretty good, but I can see why people complain about it being somewhat bland and uneventful.

The story seems to still be getting geared up, and some of the buildup feels a bit extraneous. For example, would we really have lost anything if Stewart cut the test about walking through the room without touching a black square? I guess the point is more the mood than the story, and the mood does work. But still, I wish a bit more attention was put into the pacing.