I was so hooked reading this... up until the halfway mark. Loved the twists and the characters and their personalities. Had great pacing and the storyline was really fresh, so you wouldn't know what to expect -- but it was very unrealistic. But still, I enjoyed the beginning so much that this is a 9 for me.
I appreciate that every character was accounted for in the end, so there weren't any loose ends, but the ending fell flat very flat. Things were already dropping off once Jeong was discovered, and it was just dragging by the time we got to the father's appearance.
How did the story lose the high excitement from the beginning? I blame the abrupt introduction of extra characters. Their homeroom teacher just goes to jail for being an idiot. Suddenly, the English teacher's a good guy. Dajeon had an unknown detective uncle. Social media acted as a cheap plot device. I thought Jia would have a cooler or more important role, but it turned out lame. Same with Seon; he was hyped up with potential, but ended up doing nothing significant. How Yuda died by a brick to the head by Moon (who just recovered from a coma btw), when he himself is a skilled killer, is BEYOND me. That guy who shot their father somehow escaped the building on fire when Yohan couldn't, and Dajeon was able to save him from the fire with nothing. Why did the dad even have so much power when he's just some psych doc? How could other ppl even side with his stupidly unethical experiment? How did the moms even fall apart and get together with the father?!
I'm also skeptical about the 10 years of captivity. How did they maintain hygiene (nails, hair, beard)? How was the room cleaned? Garbage? Laundry? Logic, where is it?
LOL I was stunned by how everything just "worked" for this story. Every character had a psychological problem. It was just lazy writing towards the end, but I needed to see how things ended.
Lastly... one pet peeve I always have with teen protagonists is that they're all just KIDS who did all this crap. They should've been in college.
Everything seriously went downhill and I have so many other complaints left in me, but I'll leave with my good impressions. The second half was disappointing, but the first half really had me thinking that this was a "good" type of thriller.