I'll start this review with one big trigger/content warning (both for the book and potentially my review) for sexual violence, grooming, general themes of abuse.

This book is not for everyone, not at all. I wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends, both those who've shared these types of stories with me and those who haven't. I'm not sure I should have read it. This is a really difficult and painful book.

But I loved this book. I saw some reviews call it boring and too long - too many repetitive themes, too many small life descriptors, etc... in my experience, that's exactly what navigating this kind of trauma is like. That wasn't my experience - I couldn't put the second half down. I read about trauma a lot, in fiction and not, often exploring themes of sexual violence (and especially when it comes to "ambiguous" situations), and this still felt new. I can't get those descriptions of "seeing" faces from the past on strangers out of my head - salient and real. I didn't know this happened to other people.

I watch Vanessa with compassion and a mix of frustration and understanding, the same as she watches other women who shared her experience and share that sense of "right, but it was different for me. It wasn't...." and then shy away from the hard words. I resonate with the sense of the entire fabric of my life being saturated with this experience, simultaneously minimizing and blaming myself. Reliving these experiences through fiction helps a little part of me heal, a little part of me clue into not being the exception and that I am actually hurt.

And I think about the last few lines. The life beyond, the life you build after it's all over, the life your abuser won't ever know - they'll never meet your pets or your new friends. As much as it doesn't feel that way, there is a life outside of the experience. There's an end, somewhere, in little ways.

This book was painful, validating, gripping. I never want to read it again and I also love that it exists and expect that I'll continue to find comfort in it (in the same way I find comfort in the book and movie versions of Speak and Girl Interrupted). I'm not sure how to end this review. Read the book at your own risk, I suppose. It hurts but it's very, very good.