"There are no spoilers in life. If you are observant and pragmatic, the endings of all things are easily predictable. In the most basic terms, human life is always punctuated with death. It does not cheapen the buildup to know it. There are many winding paths to an inevitable end, and there is so much beauty and pain in the watching."

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

When I say this book took me by storm, I mean it quite literally. I am still dipping my toes into the horror genre and this is the very first "extreme horror" novel I have read. I have been trying to expand my horizons and decided that a rare thunderstorm was the perfect setting to begin reading Maeve Fly.

I have been in quite the reading slump lately and I found myself flying through this book.

The Hollywood setting, the cleverly referenced Disney princesses, the moody characters and atmospheres, all tied up with a horrifying and tragic love story... it was brilliant! I often felt that I needed to connect with characters to connect with a book. While I (thankfully) do not connect with Maeve, CJ Leede does such a fantastic job at making you FEEL connected to her story and struggles of being just a bit different and ill-suited to the world around her. So much so, in fact, that when she finally flips her switch, you're kind of rooting for her.

My one, very minor, gripe is that I wish we got even more of Gideon and Maeve because there seemed to be more there than the reader got to fully witness.

As this is extreme horror, please note that there are a lot of graphic and disturbing scenes, so please tread lightly if that may be upsetting for you.

"I have never understood, and still do not understand the notion that a woman must first endure a victimhood of some sort— abandonment, abuse, oppression of the patriarchy— to be monstrous."