Books like My Secret Lies With You

Am I condemned to dislike all books I manage to get arcs of?This is one of the few times I don't really know what to do with the rating. I initially gave this book 1 star because I didn't enjoy anything about it, but I also felt pretty neutral towards it as it was so underdeveloped. I usually reserve 1 star ratings for books I really didn't like, but this one didn't give me any strong emotion. So, I'll probably treat this as I treat early dnfs, even though I read the entire thing.This is a very old-fashioned YA, probably a book I would have read in 2008. It is advertised as a mystery but it's actually not. It's just a weird contemporary. There is no climax, no twists, and it is way too short and insignificant to leave a lasting impression.All the characters are two-dimensional. It was easy to identify them and their povs sounded at least a bit different from each other, however only one personality trait defined them. Ifan was the shy passionate one, Marko was the kind one, Hannah was the bitchy one. The protagonist was too bland though, she had no personality whatsoever, and Alys was... just weird. Her motivations were illogical and unclear.One of the things that annoyed me the most was how Cait kept complaining about the holiday. Excuse me, but you can afford to go on holiday. Instead, she whined about her friend being in Ibiza and wishing she was there. All the time.Another thing was how Hannah behaved. She was always rude to everyone, and for no reason at all than to have her push everyone away so there would be more pages of drama.What I find problematic is that this book teaches young adults that they can't be independent from their friend group. There is a scene in which everyone wants to jump off a cliff into the lake except for Hannah. She complained to them a lot (fair as they were risking their life) and then: "I didn't want to be the only one not to jump. I didn't want to be that person. [...] I was going to have to do this – jump with them. I had no choice. I had to do it. I couldn't be left up here, the only one who didn't jump, alone." Actually, guess what, you CAN. Like the old saying(?) goes, "if all your friends jumped off a bridge then would you too?" You can have friends and still be independent with your own choices.This was a recurring thing, even Cait says once that "anything is better than being alone". Hmm no, thank you?If the main character was plain, Alys was the weakest characters instead, which is way worse. The whole book revolves around her, and it's only because her actions didn't have a proper purpose, so the others naturally went around in circles trying to understand what was going on with her. For most of the book I actually thought she was a mermaid because of the fascinated way the other two guys acted around her and how Hannah didn't instead. But she's not, so what the hell was that? They had met her literally ten seconds before she asks them to take a car and go to the lake. And they immediately say yes... oook?Maybe this was aimed at middle graders instead of young adults? Because it read like a really young book. I hope more people will like it though! Because to me it seems like this is an under the average YA novel, but there must be something great there right? Or I wouldn't understand how it got to publication when there are many amazing YA manuscripts out there, still waiting for someone to pick them up.I received an arc via the publisher, however my opinion is my own and wasn’t influenced in any way by this.