Hate to write negative comments about a debut novel, but

I'm really uncomfortable giving negative comments on a debut novel - it's tough enough for any young writer to break through, and I'm always on the lookout for exciting new talent and would much rather give a ringing endorsement to the first work or even the early work of a young author - but R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries, which has received some positive notices, fell so far below my expectations that I have to take note. Kwon does a nice job, initially, establishing her three main characters, who will narrate this short novel in a rotation of voices (at least 2 of them will; one says very little in his sections), and she is good at sketching in various scenes of college debauchery; this campus novel has far more sex and alcohol-imbued celebration that most of its predecessors - makes Donna Tartt and even Fitzgerald seem like teetotalers by comparison. She establishes in the first chapter that the character get involved in some kind of scheme to bomb a building on or near campus, so, good, she has my interest there. Who are these people, what drew them to such drastic action, what are the consequences? But I have to say that Kwon does little in the way of plot development. The novel is of a college student, Phoebe, bearing a great deal of grif and guilt over the death of her mother, who drifts away from her boyfriend (Will, a former Bible-college student) to join a right-wing Xtian cult. She does nothing to elucidate how or why Phoebe is draw to this cult and to its supposedly charismatic but obviously phony leader, much less how or why she's drawn into acts of extreme violence. Moreover, her handling of the bombing of the local abortion clinic is sketchy: How would the group even know how to set off a fatal bombing? Is it possible that the police would be unaware of such an action in development? Is there no surveillance at the local clinic (esp in the wake of national demonstrations)? Could this small group of students vanish from sight after the attack? And what about Phoebe herself - can we in any way believe that this sheltered young woman could elude pursuit and fake (probably) her death? I could go on - but the point is that the author has set out to write a kind of thriller (compare Hearst-based novel American Woman) but loses interest in or focus on the plot, and along the way lost my interest, too.