I will warn anyone that this is not an easy read - not just literally because the pages go all twisty and wild, but because there’s a lot of really heavy subject matters in this book that may be hard for some. It was hard for me. I would recommend looking up content warnings if you are on the fence and are nervous about any triggers.



This book is unlike anything I’ve read before. I loved it. My amazing friend sent to to me as a gift while I recover from jaw surgery. When I first flipped through the pages and saw how complex they are, I thought “there’s no way I’m smart enough to read this. And it’s going to take me like five years to finish it.” But I’m happy to say that I am smart enough to read this book and I did it in like a month and a half!!!!

As far as the story goes, it’s absolutely fascinating. How it’s told, the multiple levels… wow! This book genuinely scared me at times and I’m not sure I’ve ever read another book that scared me like this. But it was a fun scare, if you’re terrified of the dark - BE WARNED.

When I encountered the red words that were struck, I went to google. I thought, I must know how I’m supposed to read this and I didn’t have the slightest idea on what it meant. Google took me to Reddit, where many people said to just read everything as it comes up. It was overwhelming to think about, because it seemed so complex already! Now red words?! Give me a break! But then I saw that someone described the book itself as a labyrinth, one that we, the reader, must figure out as we go. And that drastically helped me with my understanding of how to read this book. Understanding that the book itself is its own labyrinth somehow made everything click for me. It made it way easier to tackle these wacky pages and the confusing formatting.

The formatting, much like the layout of the house, is constantly changing. This gives us, the reader, a sense of what exploring the house felt like. You cannot get comfortable, just when you start to, things change and you have to essentially find your way back to familiarity. Except the second you do, it changes again. I absolutely love how every detail, every aspect of this book is there, in a way, to confuse but ultimately inform the reader of what’s going on. The second I pieced all of that together is the second I started to understand the book even more. It made it a very fun puzzle to figure out.

Anyways, this book is really cool, really spooky, and fun to figure out. Very sad though, oh my gosh, my heart was so heavy at times. OH and unreliable narrators which is something I have always loved in movies, tv, books. SO YEAH it was fun trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. But there was some gross sexual dialogue that ya girl was not a fan of. It was a lot. And there was a part with a pug that I HATED. Boo!! We don’t like that part! But overall, it was a fascinating read and I would love to read more books like this with puzzles and twists and turns.