She's Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard

“I think hating parties is a sign of a healthy aversion to people.”
The summer is winding down in San Diego. Veronica is bored, caustically charismatic, and uninspired in her photography. Nico is insatiable, subversive, and obsessed with chaotic performance art. They’re artists first, best friends second. But that was before Mick. Delicate, lonely, magnetic Mick: the perfect subject, and Veronica’s dream girl. The days are long and hot―full of adventure―and soon they are falling in love. Falling so hard, they never imagine what comes next. One fire. Two murders. Three drowning bodies. One suspect . . . one stalker. This is a summer they won’t survive.

I flew through this book! I found Veronica and Mick’s relationship to be very engrossing even though both of them were insanely annoying. Basically, Veronica is a photographer and Mick has a phobia of having her picture taken? Like it’s at the point where her mother asks her to do a modelling job in order to pay rent but she refuses. And it’s a shoot showing off a HOUSE. But Veronica decides that Mick is the perfect model and lowkey coerces her into it. So that aspect of their relationship is pretty toxic, but Mick also seems overly stubborn.
Though it is pretty exciting to find out who the killer is, it isn’t really that surprising. The clues are all there, it just depends when you catch on to it. Also, the motivation of the villain isn’t fleshed out that well, and they just start seeming like a psycho eventually.
Overall, way too much of the plot depended on miscommunication and lies between characters, which doesn’t leave a lot of surprise for the reader since we have the dual pov between Veronica and Mick. The reader knows everything and it gets boring watching the characters chase down dead ends. Though the characters are interesting, their actions are extremely jarring and make them borderline unlikable.