Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Holiday House/Peachtree/Pixel+Ink for a free digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Phew, this was a hell of a book. Chock full of gore, generational trauma, growing up trans and queer in a very rural area, deadly family feuds, and how the land holds its history, I would not say this is for the faint of heart. My reading experience was full of grimacing, wincing, and shuddering. I felt a deep connection to Miles as someone who grew up in a rural hometown in Michigan that was shockingly similar to the story's West Virginian town, although I figured out my transness much later. Similar to Miles, I was naive in my belief that my parents were good people, and therefore, if I came out as trans to them, they would do the work to understand. Instead, I send TikToks to a groupchat of "how to use they/them pronouns" that go ignored and unopened, similar to the abundance of resources Miles painstakingly collects in his coming out email to his parents, which they ignore at first. The growth of his family and the way they stuck together even when they didn't understand Miles' transness fully was a consistence I needed in this book, painful learning curves and all. There was also an emphasis on being queer and trans without leaving your rural hometown--acknowledging that we still exist in rural spaces, even if the world seems to think we don't.
I really liked the discussions of neurodivergence, both because they were relatable and because they highlighted the importance of finding neurodivergent community to support you and share advice on making your environment as accessible as possible for your needs (loved the shower ritual scene that Amber shared with Miles; it warmed my heart and made me rethink how I force myself into discomfort because I feel like I should be able to handle it.)
I will say that this book lost me towards the middle when it felt like an endless loop of "let's kill these kids! but wait, they're a product of their environment, so isn't this wrong, actually?" I don't know how to feel about the violence these kids enacted on each other throughout this book

and that the conclusion for most of them was gruesome and bloody death

--it made a lot of the valid arguments about how they weren't necessarily at fault for how they were raised and the pressures that forced them into working for the Davies' feel meaningless to me. 
I'll admit I don't know a lot about communism, but it felt like it was kind of sloppily slipped into the story at some points? Like, it felt like the author just wanted to talk about communism and threw in their thoughts as they saw fit. 

More weird plot things that didn't make much sense to me: Miles' parents not guessing that the Davies' and their posse attacked him until Miles said it outright late into the story because it seemed so obvious; Cooper's death felt like a cop-out to me because he was mentally ill and "too far gone" instead of doing more with his character, and I wonder if part of killing him off was to make room for a queer-platonic relationship between Miles and Dallas; the insistence on recreating history with both Miles' family sending him off to trap Noah with the same tools as his ancestor and Davies' insistence on killing Miles with the railroad spike just like his ancestor did to Saint; the family absolutely normalizing Miles and Cooper killing Paul and Eddie as if their family feud excuses them as casualties; genuinely how did Noah know so much about Miles' life and actions?

I think I enjoyed this book overall? The writing style and sensory details were good, but I think the plot just lost me a little bit.