yet another highly anticipated 2025 read that results in a massive nothingburger….. sigh.

i really wanted to love this. it sounded completely up my alley. trauma? check. off the walls female mc who slowly loses her mind? check. but instead this really gave me nothing. the characters were really nothing, the plot really didn’t exist, the ending was lacklustre…. how this book ended up being kind of reminds me of my expectations & then the reality of nightbitch.

abby was a fine main character. i kept thinking she’d get more depth beyond mummy issues but hey, sometimes that’s all a character is. and truly that’s all she was. i did buy the fact she had this “dark side” to her, but the progression of her still going about her life to her downward spiral felt like it was pulled out of thin air; like it only happened because the plot required it to. i enjoyed the climax where abby truly loses her shit, but then it fizzles into nothing, and the epilogue then baits you into thinking the tension is back, except nope it somehow deflates even more. 

every other character was flat. the only intriguing character was laura, and then nothing is done with her. the blurb makes it seem like she’s going to be a massive presence on the story, but in reality she has like 3 scenes and then she fades away from the text. i almost would’ve preferred if the paranormal aspect was completely thrown out of the script because seriously it added nothing except a distraction to the actual plot (which was practically non-existent).

oh yes, the plot. what was the plot? glad you asked. couldn’t tell you. because there wasn’t really one. the book kinda just follows abby around as she’s at work obsessing over ms bundy, at home crying or cleaning or cooking… and that’s kind of it. add some flashbacks, a mystic and a ring and you have this book. the beginning of this novel really looked promising, but after like 100 pages absolutely nothing meaningful is done with all the set-up. like yes mummy issues for ralph AND abby! i love that! but nothing was done with it. nothing was done with the ring, or cal, or… i could just infinitely go on. i’m actually so annoyed because this truly did have potential. but this book was trying too hard to be quirky and zainy and haha woman goes batshit insane, and instead of actually having abby meaningfully descend into insanity, there are just paragraphs of waffle and waffle and waffle and then more waffle and like a paragraph of something interesting and oh look, a jellied salmon. 

this book felt like a waste of time. and im so upset because it really seemed like it would be good. clearly it wasn’t! 
will say tho the one redeeming quality of this book is that it was quite funny and i liked seeing the side character’s dialogue when talking with Insane Abby