Rose Regnero was a star reporter for her high school paper, destined for a career in journalism, when she abruptly quit two months ago, leaving behind her very-nearly-sort-of-boyfriend and editor-in-chief, Grant. Now she is trying to be normal at her senior prom, with a new boy and new interests, and isn’t looking back.

Grant was totally blindsided when Rose walked away from the Gazette. After all, they’d dedicated their lives to it for the past four years, had even planned on majoring in journalism together at Northwestern—which is why Grant is determined to entice Rose back. But whether it’s really to the paper or to him he’s not entirely sure.

When an alarm is set off at prom and the school goes on lockdown, Grant discovers that someone is loose in the building with a gun. But Rose, caught outside of the gym, knows differently. Will her instincts for a good story win out against her resolve to leave Grant and the paper behind? 

This is one of those moments when judging a book by a cover bit me in the behind. This was not at all what I expected it to be.

The structuring of the story was a little complicated with the constant flashbacks, prolonging the actual events of what the story was really about. It took forever to get to the actual “conflict” of the book where the prom goes on lock-down because of a supposed shooter in the school.

As far as characters go, Rose was okay, but I didn’t understand how she could end up liking Grant after all the bashing she’d done. To me it just seemed like she was fed up with him, so the whole turnaround was like, what? Grant on the other hand was a little brat. He seemed okay at first, but then you realize how manipulative he is of his friends, especially when it comes to anything relating to the newspaper (which for him, is just about everything).

This book had the potential to be great give that it dealt with a very serious topic, but it was poorly executed. There wasn’t enough focus on the issue of a school shooting.

Rating: 2/5 stars