Genre: YA thriller, mystery

Synopsis: Tress Montor’s family used to mean something—until she didn’t have a family anymore. When her parents disappeared seven years ago while driving her best friend home, Tress lost everything. The entire town shuns her now that she lives with her drunken, one-eyed grandfather at what locals refer to as the “White Trash Zoo.”

Felicity Turnado has it all: looks, money, and a secret. One misstep could send her tumbling from the top of the social ladder, and she’s worked hard to make everyone forget that she was with the Montors the night they disappeared. Felicity has buried what she knows so deeply that she can’t even remember what it is . . . only that she can’t look at Tress without feeling shame and guilt.
But Tress has a plan. A Halloween costume party at an abandoned house provides the ideal situation for Tress to pry the truth from Felicity—brick by brick—as she slowly seals her former best friend into a coal chute. Tress will have her answers—or settle for revenge

Content/Trigger Warnings: Loss of parents, drug and alcohol use, animal abuse/death/violence, panic attacks and anxiety, bullying, trauma, violence

Let me just start by saying “What?”

The Initial Insult had so much potential, but it just got so confusing and ended in a way that was wildly cliffhanging, but also it just didn’t make sense.

The storyline is super interesting. Two girls who were best friends and are now enemies. One affluent and the other living under incredibly difficult circumstances. One with parents who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and one who may know more than she’s letting one.

But then the timeline is laid out very weirdly. It alternates narrator regularly, but not necessarily every other chapter so I was often confused on who was narrating until halfway through the chapter. And then the chapters would jump from present day, to far past, to present day, to recent past. It was just all too confusing and frustrating to keep up with. Basically the reader has to work too hard to understand the book which makes it difficult to enjoy.

Oh, not to mention there are several chapters where the narrator is actually a big cat (a cougar I think?), and I just don’t understand the purpose. Just how does add to the story? I really just don’t get it. This absolutely wasn’t the book for me.