After reading both In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties, I'm realizing that maybe Carmen Maria Machado's writing is not for me, as brilliant and unique as it is. The first maybe 30 pages really pulled me in and I was tabbing passages I loved and thinking this might be a new favorite. However, that feeling slowly dwindled and by the end of the book, I felt like I had to force myself to finish. The sections that talked about Machado's relationship with her abusive girlfriend in a more straightforward way really spoke to me, but much of the book was written in more abstract ways that just didn't do anything for me. I think I would've felt much more moved by the story if I had been able to read about Machado's feelings and experiences in a more direct and linear narrative style instead of getting them through abstract snippets that I had to try to decode. I felt like I was just waiting the entire time for the moment to arrive when we were really going to dive into the nitty-gritty details of the relationship and it never came.

I am glad this book exists to shed some light on queer abusive relationships because that is rarely talked about, and based on other people's reviews I know that this book speaks to so many people. Unfortunately, although I did connect with portions of it and learned from it, it didn't live up to the hype for me and I didn't find it as profound as I wanted to. However, I might give it a reread in the future to see if I might understand it better or connect with it more the second time around.