2.5/5

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This book is about a young boy named Lucien and his experiences at House of Earth-- an alternative school with some.... questionable teaching methods. He and his mother are incredibly involved at House of Earth, but things change for the whole community when the 9/11 attacks occur. The leader of the community, O. C. Leroux, is a man Lucien is taught to look up to and follow at all costs. The question Lucien ends up asking himself is what cost is too high?

The slow burn of what is actually going on in the House of Earth was really interesting. I was intrigued by this weird community and what was going on behind the scenes. That being said, this was a literary fiction title written from the perspective of a child. That is SUCH a risky creative move that can really pay off (a la Room by Emma Donoghue), or it could come across as weird and pretentious. Unfortunately, this title fell prey to the latter.

The other big downer for me with this title was the last chapter of "Ever After." We cut to about 20 years after the previous chapter and it felt super abrupt, unexpected (in a bad way), and unnecessary.

This title would have been significantly better for me (3.5-4/5 stars) if it had been about 50 pages shorter and hadn't used the over-tired trope of an epilogue set 20 years in the future.