Holy manic pixie dream girl, Batman.

Here’s the thing—I thought this book would be right up my alley. But this book wasn’t actually for me (though I can theoretically understand someone else enjoying it). I wanted the darkly romantic fairy tale page-turner that’s been compared to The Invisible Life of Addie LeRue…

Except, it was more like Gone Girl meets Peter Pan, in the most ham-fisted way possible 🥴

There was no romance, not even a toxic one. They met, got married, she told him not to ask her anything about herself, he agreed because she was hot, and the "romance” portion was over in the first few pages.

It wasn’t particularly dark. The characters were too cartoonish to be unnerving and the gothic vibes weren’t delivering. The house was less haunted than a Goosebumps novel and besides some casual agism (an old lady, whose body we described in detail, had a few ominous lines) and a dead bird, nothing came of it.

The synopsis also mentioned being mysterious and it could have been. Except—the way the audiobook voiced some of the characters was a MASSIVE spoiler. That, plus the 1,000 hints meant that the final reveal was beyond predictable.

I guess the language was supposed to be beautiful? It was 90% overwrought metaphors and similes. But they were all about fetishized innocence, women’s bodies, and flowers (obviously). And again I blame the audiobook, but the stilted wording, the repetitive imagery, and the full-on melting pot of mixed metaphors all sounded insufferably cringe when spoken out loud. It’s possible it sounds nice when you read it silently in your head, but I couldn’t unhear it.

What was even the plot? It wasn’t character-driven (the characters weren’t well written enough), I personally didn’t enjoy the writing style, and for a book with so little happening, it still managed to leave tons of unanswered questions?

This book is for someone. But the audiobook is for no one—avoid that thing like the plague 😅