“MEME” by Aaron Starmer is young adult thriller story that deals with a group of teens getting away with murder. The story itself starts out right away with action, which is the murder of a teen group’s toxic “friend” Cole, making it a good story for anyone who likes straight away action.

The beginning of the story had a strong pull to it, keeping me engaged until about a quarter of the way through. The story starts to get out of place when the main group of teens face a roadblock in their plan. The group faces a problem when there is a MEME made of the group made out of their confession that they buried with Cole’s body. The friend group felt all over the place, even with the constant point-of-view changes in the story; we never got to know the individual characters better or the friend group, making it hard to follow along with the characters and their thought process throughout the story. With this being said, it was also hard to follow along with their emotions, making it hard to sympathize with the characters.

The book felt like a different book when the point of view would change, the characters and their side of the story didn’t mix well with the other character’s point of view, making the stories clash against each other when they’re supposed to come together to make the story suspenseful and lead up the mysterious action.

There was a lot of potential behind the idea of the story but it felt like there was no suspense, thrill or anything when reading this mystery, when it came to the big ending and reveal there was no shock factor or anything even leading to a big reveal in the end.

The beginning of the book was at a good pace and felt as if I could really get drawn into the story. There was enough suspense and thrill that kept me in to read more, but when the book went on, the pacing suddenly changed in about the middle. It kept on dragging certain aspects of the story that felt slow and almost unbearable to read at certain points, then proceeding on going on a super fast pace in which I thought I had skipped a chapter or two because it made no sense to the timeline and theme of the story. 

The idea of the story was a great idea for a murder mystery / thriller, and though it could really be pulled off, but the plot, raising action, shock factor and other major necessities for a good story lacked, making it a bland story. The one thing the book was good at doing was how it portrayed social media and how it can have an effect on internet users. The characters get a post made about them and we get to see how it feels when there’s a post made about you and you get publicly shamed. The book did a good job at bringing light to online harassment and cyberbullying. In the story there’s a lot of mature themes such as language, sexual themes, murder and topics such as different types of abuse throughout the story.

Overall, I didn’t really enjoy the story and felt like a book I’d read once and never touch again, making me rate “MEME” 2/4 stars in total.