I was really surprised by this book. It sucked me in and 400 pages flew by pretty darn fast. There were a few minor things I didn't love-- some teen talk, some HEA couplings, some pushiness/forced usage of statistics and educational information-- but I really loved the importantness of the story and the personalities of the characters.

This book contains a lot of things that I like. Multiple perspectives, high school hierarchies, interesting characters, good writing. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book, but it was so much MORE than what I thought it was going to be.

North Shore was an interesting town to read about. 98% of the kids at North Shore go to college-- their goal is 100%. How is this a thing???? I hope that part is 100% fiction because it ENRAGED me. Who are these people to say that all kids have to go to college or they're failures? College is not the be all end all of life. I'm not saying people shouldn't go, but they sure as shit shouldn't if they don't know what they want to do, or if they just don't want to.

The problem with this town is that there is no room for anything but status quo-- and status quo here is SCARY. It's Ivy League acceptance, it's 999 clubs and state championship winning sports, it's perfect bodies and designer clothes. AND it's being oblivious that all this is causing kids to kill themselves rather than disappoint.

The actual plot of the book follows Simone- who gets swallowed by the PERFECTION beast and turns from a hippie- go where the wind takes her kind of gal, to someone who obsesses over test scores. Mallory was also a standout-- she's the North Shore standard, and then she loses a close friend to the pressure and questions everything.

I flew through this 450-page book because of the intense NEED TO KNOW feelings it gave me. But there were a few minor things that stopped me from full-blown obsession. There was some teen-talk that was #annoying (like using hashtags while talking), and some HEA stuff that I didn't feel was that realistic to the situation. Also, I know this is based on a true story, and I appreciate the research that the author clearly did, but I felt like some of the statistics and educational information could be heavy-handed and pushy at times.

OVERALL: I really enjoyed this and could see a lot of teens relating to the pressure the characters were under. I felt like this book was able to both tell a story AND shine a light on a real-life situation in a coherent way. It will suck you in with the character's stories, but then show you what can happen when teens are under too much pressure from all angles. I totally recommend.

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Three stars I guess, and the review might contradict itself. TW: suicide; grief; eating disorders; misogyny, clinically narcissist parent (Mallory's mom); others I've forgotten.
This isn't a thriller or mystery. It's a YA tragedy trying for the structure of a thriller, but it absolutely doesn't work. This is a character study that manages to have every character be a carboard cutout. Their inner monologues were exhausting, each in their own ways. This book could have been a hundred and fifty pages shorter and lost nothing. It was incredibly wordy. The structure was awful. For the first hundred pages of the hardback edition I read, "suicide" as a word appears nowhere, and is barely mentioned as a concept. There's references to deaths but vaguely. Then it's wham, suicide and grief and much more clearly a fiction book about it. As the book chugs along, statistics are whole paragraphs of dialogue. Pages and pages of exposition. Stuff that would be helped the book make more sense had it been earlier in the book, is marched in and shown off.

In a book about teen suicide that likely refers to real statistics and incidences, nowhere are gay kids mentioned. In September of 2010, nine children killed themselves due to bullying from peers on account of sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation. This led to the It Gets Better Project. "September's Children" is a song that names all the kids at the end. This book, released in 2017, makes such an enormous deal about "rich kids have problems too!" and acts like they're the sole sufferers of the epidemic. No one in the book is gay. This felt deliberate.

Cliches rein towards the end: workaholic parents are suddenly able to make time for their kids and go to family therapy, which they all agree on. A student does so much drugs that his dealer cuts him off (whaaaat? for so many reasons). The stoner who doesn't shower starts to, and cuts back on weed a little. Kids confront bad parents. An eating disorder is magically cured upon talking to others about suicide and then being invited to a pizza dinner as a way to say thank you. In fifty pages or less, mind you. SO neatly wrapped up all of the sudden! On and on. I wanted the characters to work for the change and see them develop, but the author had other ideas. The author had tons of This Is Your Author Speaking (thanks to Das_Sporking for the term), to the point that the last 200 pages were solely that. It was no longer a story, but a sermon. I hated it so much by page 320 that I grabbed it and headed to the library to finish. I couldn't stand having it in my apartment any longer.

And yet. And yet. It was clear I wasn't the intended audience. Everyone was grating and it was rare I sympathized with anyone. But this is going to resonate with a lot of people. I want it to. It will provide hope to those who feel none. For that, I am grateful at the thought. I hope others get a lot more out of this than I did. ( )

North Shore, Illinois, is the perfect town to live in and raise your family. The homes are perfect, the families are perfect, the schools are perfect, living here is perfect. So why are so many teens stepping in front of commuter trains? Could there be more going on than meets the eye? Meet a number of teens in this book who come to grips with the reasons behind these suicides and see what they do to end this horrible trend in their community. This is a wonderful look at why people feel that their only option is to end their lives as well as a thought-provoking discussion as to what we can all do to be "gatekeepers" for each other's safety. ( )

Every reader, parent, teacher and student should read this book. It’s the perfect mix of reading entertainment and call to action. The timing of this book could not have been more perfect, right after the controversy surrounding “13 Reasons Why” (a Netflix series “glamorizing” suicide), The Gatekeepers provides us a more sobering account of suicide inspired by true events.

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