Kat is the protagonist of the story. She is a journalist-turned-content-mill-writer and a perpetual disappointment to herself for not fulfilling her dreams of being a novelist and to her mother for not fulfilling her mother’s dream of being an award-winning journalist. Her career with the LA Times was ruined when she pursued a lead on Meg Williams’s involvement with Cory Dempsey from an anonymous tip, which led her to Cory’s best friend, Nate, who raped Kat. Kat’s trauma cost her her job and well-being.

While Kat tries to do what she perceives as the right things, like tracking down Meg to expose her and paying off her fiancé Scott’s debts, she is completely unaware of the truth: that Meg isn’t a bad person, and that Scott has been lying to her about his gambling addiction. Kat’s trauma creates a kind of self-righteousness in her that makes her unaware of certain aspects of her life, which her fiancé deftly navigates to take advantage of her and which Meg sees and understands about her. By the end of the novel, however, Kat wises up thanks to Meg and doesn’t live her life on others’ terms anymore. Instead, she seeks her own form of justice by writing about her experiences and moving forward to con Nate so he can never hurt anyone else the way he hurt her again.

Ron Ashton, candidate for Senate and real estate mogul, acts as Meg Williams’s main antagonist throughout the story. He isn’t often presented in a humanizing light because even his most candid moments are tainted by his corrupt sense of power and rampant misogyny and classism. He believes the problem with society is the fact that people are intolerant of his attitudes. He thinks he should be able to say whatever he wants to a woman, and she should be grateful for it, rather than thinking it’s sexual harassment. He openly admits to taking advantage of situations for business gain, like evicting people with more socioeconomic constraints from apartment buildings or preying financially upon college students who don’t know better.

If his words aren’t enough to characterize him, his actions certainly do the job: He swoops into Meg’s mother’s life, swindles her house out from under her, and turns Meg’s family out to live in their car while Meg’s mom is dying of terminal illness. He also misuses campaign funds to fund his personal investments. There is no line Ron won’t cross—not because he’s so ambitious or evil but because he’s so flooded with the power and privilege of being a corrupt, white man in a corrupt white man’s world, both as a politician and investor in real estate.

Given his power, as well as his personal connection to Meg, he is Meg’s final target. Meg uses all the things that usually embolden him to take advantage of others to bring him down once and for all.

Cory Dempsey is a former high school math teacher who engaged in pedophilia by pursuing relationships with his underage students. When he was caught with one of these students—Kristen who got pregnant as a result—he signed some papers to leave quietly and moved onto a new district where he became principal.

Early in his relationship with Meg, he demonstrates controlling behaviors by trying to tell her what to wear. Simultaneously, he likes to be doted on by her, believing she needs him. He likes the idea of young girls who are sexually inexperienced so they can learn what he likes, and this revelation casts many of his more idealistic, positive quotes about the power of youth and young minds into a more twisted light. Cory is also characterized by the company he keeps, including misogynistic, skeptical Nate, who later goes on to rape Kat.

In the second part of the novel, which focuses on a period 10 years before the events transpiring in the present—Cory acts as a primary antagonist. He wants to have relationships with young women in his class and control Meg, but Meg wants to make sure he can never do that again and teach him a lesson.