An eerie, lyrical, and engaging debut of a book. The writing alternates between rich, evocative (though at times cliché) imagery and witty dialogue, brought to life very well by the audiobook narrator. I enjoyed this read, or listen, a fair bit.

It wasn't scary so much as chilling, especially as the mystery unravelled, but I still found it very visceral at times - a few of the dream sequences definitely gave me shivers. The themes of grief, escape, and family are explored in decent enough depth, and loss takes a central role within the story, both as an incorporeal concept and anthropomorphized as a mythological creature. I particularly liked that

"killing" it doesn't immediately make things better

; in the end, there's still work and healing Mackenzie has to do. 

I did feel like the story itself was sparse - often the case with novels that are "grown" out of short stories - so much so that the final conf ontation felt almost anticlimactic. I wish the characters and their relationships had been fleshed out more, too, especially with the thread of

dream magic

tying them all together. Make no mistake, family is a huge focus, but at times it feels superficially so, as a symbol and nothing else. I feel like that's the nature of debuts, though, and I'm looking forward to catch more of the author's writing out there someday!