I'm not actually going to mention anything unless someone else wants to talk about it.

I've not read it, but it's on my wish list now!

I read it. You can email me if you want, or if nobody chimes in we can discuss it. I read it last summer, I think and don't own a copy, so I don't know how detailed I could be.

I read it recently, so it is fresh in my head. Quite an interesting read, the author has a bright future ahead of her. I wouldn't mind talking about it, but how would we do it in this thread? I don't want to spoil anything, but I have questions too.

We can talk about it here. These comments are going to show up blacked out in the Recent Comments page, thanks to seanyboy's magic Spoilers hack.

So! I wonder about several things in the novel, let's see...

1) What purpose did the Junebugs serve? The father obviously loathed them, so in what way were they useful to him? I don't get that.

2) Did Hannah set up the whole bluebloods thing (which had been going on for several years) solely in anticipation of the day that Blue would move there, so she could draw her into the club? Or otherwise, why did she do it? Those kids didn't seem cut out to make very good revolutionaries. At all.

and I have more questions! But I will continue in further comments...

I don't get the whole Hannah-breakdown thing. She hacks her hair off, generally seems to be falling apart... because... why? The Smoke Harvey murder? She's apparently been doing whatever it is she does since she was 17... she's 44. And suddenly she can't take the guilt?

Or is it just because she's worried that she's going to be discovered? And what's up with the whole thing about it all coming apart because Smoke's daughter was going to start asking questions? They have some organized thing where, like, five or six people at that party were involved in propelling him towards his death exactly so it couldn't/shoudn't come apart, right? International mastermind death/murder/kill geniuses who hadn't left a trace in nearly 30 years, and suddenly they somehow leave a bunch of loose strings flapping in the breeze?

And finally, assuming that it was going to come apart, come apart so badly that Hannah needed to be eliminated and Daddy Van Meer needed to disappear - wouldn't Blue have mentioned something about that aftermath in this memoir that she writes a year later?

And... I'm assuming it's Andreo the gardener who killed Hannah (and that he was also at the party when when Smoke was killed, in Gareth's costume)... is that what you're getting?

Personally, I think that most of the explanations are merely fabulations on Blue's part. She of the amazing imagination and story-telling skills, obviously conjectured the majority of what she said. In her pain and grief, she shifted her focus away from her awful real life into her imagination, in order to cope with the loss of these important people from her life.
What purpose did the Junebugs serve? Daddy needed to get laid.

Possibly... but of the concrete evidence, the "wanted" photo of the Nightwatchmen ringleader was the same guy that they visited in Paris, so it seems as though her theories might be mostly correct.

Yeah, I guess the Junebugs were just about that. But since he's supposed to be so irresistible and everything, I figured he could do better. But I suppose he couldn't afford to get close to anyone.

I agree with msali's basic take - it's Blue's story, and she-of-the-imagination has let it out and this is the form it took - to rationalize a horrible event. It's not a detective story, even though that's the style in which it is presented, it's a riff on the form. Because I often prefer the non-linear story, I just let all the questions in my head go pretty early and read for pleasure.

Junebugs? Well Dad doesn't want to get attached and Blue doesn't like the pattern or want a rival or something, so that's the way she tells it.