This is a very interesting ya horror and I enjoyed reading it.
It follows Athan, a young man, who breaks his grandmother's rules by looking into a mirror during a party he was invited to. Then the screaming starts and when he finally leaves there's corpses everywhere. Now something is hunting him. (And he also faces the survailance horror of invasive landlords which is unfortunately way too relateable)!
The cover is eyecatching and one of the main reasons I picked this book up. Eldritch horror, spiders, mirrors. It definitely delivers these aspects and I adored it.
One thing I really enjoyed is the storytelling in the audiobook. Some chapters are told in you-form and the voice acting there sent shivers down my spine. It was really, really good and increased the terror of the story a lot! There's also great sound effects and that really enhanced my immersion. Another thing I liked was the horror and the exploration of art as something that can be impued with power. And the gore is gruesome and terrifying which was great.
Sadly I also found myself struggling with some aspects: There's a romance in there that's quite sweet, however it proceedes quite fast in a very short time and so becomes a bit unbelieveable at points. If insta love is a no go for you, then you might struggle with this. I mostly ignored it myself and instead focussed on the dread as romance is not really my thing, which made it bearable to me. In general the story moves rather fast and so it is sometimes hard to follow the plot as it jumps around a lot and sometimes I wish we had gotten more explanation for the horror aspects and character backstory. This is what kept the book from being fully enjoyable for me.
But if you're like me and enjoy eldritch beings, poisonous wallpapers, scary hallucinations and warped mirror images that reveal true horror you'll probably have a good time with this anyway. Definitely an interesting and spooky experience and absolutely a book where I can say the audiobook might be more fun (in my case it gained an extra star for how much I adored the concept!)
Tw for self harm, suicide (in the form of self sacrificial suicide), intrusive thoughts, compulsions, death by fire, mass death, child endangerment, mind control/puppetry, body horror.