I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Chloe Roberts is on top of the world. After a stellar first year at the prestigious Morton Academy, she’s a shoo-in for Head Girl and a coveted position in the school’s secret society, Jewel and Bone. But her dreams are shattered when her best friend, Nikhita Patel, unfairly snatches the top spot—and steals Chloe's boyfriend at the same time.

Heartbroken and humiliated, Chloe discovers a shocking truth: Jewel and Bone isn’t as secret as she thought. The rest of the school despises the Jewels, and there’s even a “Book of Crime and Punishment” cataloging their misdeeds. Things take a very dark turn when the names in the book start to correlate with murders of Jewel and Bone members on campus. Suddenly, anyone could be a suspect.

And now, Chloe must navigate a web of lies and deceit to get to the bottom of this twisted game before she’s next on the kill list.

Short and Sweet Review

This was supposed to be Chloe Roberts year, she was going to be Head Girl and basically be on top, but that changes when her supposed friend Nikhita takes the position and her boyfriend. Chloe is also involved in the schools secret society Jewel and Bone with a few other select girls but since she’s been humiliated and doesn’t have many friends outside of the society she turns to her roommates. Her roommates, Claire and Amari show her the Book of Crime and Punishment. In the book students write down the names of other students they feel did them wrong and what kind of punishment they deserve. This is when Chloe learns that Jewel and Bone isn’t as secret as she thought and she and the other members aren’t well liked by the rest of the school. When members of Jewel and Bone are murdered and the way they’re murdered are the punishments written in the book, Chloe knows something is very wrong and she needs to figure it out fast before she’s next.

This book started off well, we meet all of our players, Chloe is our main character and she has moments where she’s smart and makes sense of things and others where she’s very dense and you want to shake her and hope she comes to reality. This is Chloe’s second year at Morton and it really didn’t start off well so she’s basically going through it for a majority of the book. Nikhita is seen as the queen bee and most of the girls who Chloe was previously friends with are shunning her and she really only has Amari and Claire as friends and sometimes Rachel. The first death doesn’t happen until 30% through the book and I was okay with that because the first part was setting everything up, but this book was painfully slow. We see the characters go to a lot of social events and argue but I was waiting for more girls to you know die. Anyway when each girl dies the school ends up covering it up and Chloe starts to believe something is up with Nikhita and her sponsor and that there may be some weird cult thing going on. Anyway it’s pretty obvious who’s doing the killing. I honestly think the book could have been shorter instead of doing the same cycle of social event, Chloe and Nikhita getting into it, murder, repeat.

Overall, this is the first book I’ve read by Murphy, I didn’t hate it but it wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve read either. I have other books by her that I’ll probably get to at some point. This book was good in the first half but then the pacing and the repetitive nature of the events made me want to finish this book immediately so I could move on. The plot was good but the execution not so much. This book wasn’t for me but it was good enough that I think other people would still enjoy it.