An ostensibly shy, bright, socially inept loner meets his queer, in every way, counterpart in college. When their relationship turns to toxic co-dependency their upbringing and social stratification create a toxic spiral that bring out the very best and very worst in them, culminating into acts one-upmanship into very dark places.

This sometimes get billed as Secret History meets Call Me By Your Name. I don’t think it’s that. The prose work is great but it’s not Tartt. Nor is the love story parallel to CMBYN. There’s two gay men and they’re both the same age and the power dynamics, I guess kind of could be likened to CMBYN, but it’s a reach. Just because they’re in school and they descend into darkness does not mean it’s evocative of Secret History. It’s much better to go into this knowing it’s unhinged, about two underage 17 year olds that are diametrically opposed in every characteristic, and it gets very dark. There’s themes around motivated thinking paired with Paul, the massively unreliable narrator, social constructs pressuring queer identities in various ways that relate to mental health and stability. It’s a rich experience that doesn’t need to be likened to other popular stuff to sell copies.

I wouldn’t say it particularly feels literary, but more upmarket. Better than commercial fiction in every respect, but attempting the kind of appeal that comes with paralleling and invoking genre fiction. I think the most fun aspect of it is the unreliable qualities Paul’s narration suggest even after a first reading. How much can be believed about what happened, the dialogue, how things play out, the courting, the ending. All of it being suspect makes it far more interesting than the actual trajectory of the plot, for me. The character work and themes are very convincing. The prose work is where I found it less engaging and did make it feel like things dragged, because Paul’s projection of himself onto the world make for very similar interactions and plot beats. And they just keep reoccurring. By the time things come to a head though, it dovetails nicely into a substantive and satisfying ending. It’s tense and feels right. Elevating it from a 3 star read to a 4.