Point of View

The novel is narrated from the perspective of Jill, the protagonist of the story. As a 17-year-old girl from a privileged background, Jill isn’t maliciously lying in her narrative, but she is naïve and unobservant to a nearly unrealistic degree. Jill withholds the details of Shaila’s last night—only ever making vague references to it—until the end of the novel.

This serves the obvious function of creating mystery about what happened to Shaila for the reader. If the reader were presented with the same information Jill was presented with on the day of Shaila’s murder—that Shaila was last seen heading off to jump off Ocean Cliff with Adam, alone, to perform a dangerous final test in the Player’s hazing ritual—then surely Adam would have been a leading suspect in the quest to determine who really murdered Shaila...