In Vicious, V. E. Schwab writes some great prose and hooks you with a lot of writing gimmicks (past, present and future POVs, extremely convenient circumstances/decisions to set up exciting scenes, etc.) but she struggles to create a believable narrative with likeable characters.

Almost every character is straight from the Build-Your-Own-Fan-Fiction factory which would be fine but they have more in common with cardboard cutouts than living breathing characters.

The premise of the story and the way the story is told is as edgy as possible. It feels as though it’s dark to be dark and appeal to a certain demographic not because the story being told needs to be this grim.

It’s not bad per say, I enjoyed the moment to moment storytelling but reflecting on the story after reading it has left me feeling not much.

I’ve entertained myself with much better “people with powers” media in the past. Reading Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) was life changing and it doesn’t suffer from cynical edginess or make use of artificially convenient circumstances to propel the plot forward like Vicious does.