Perhaps, read none of this. Read nothing about this book. Just pick it up—but finish it! Or, make it beyond Part I. Trust Choi, the title asks it of you.

It's difficult to write this review and dance around what happens; it's a gamble that Choi takes within its pages and that adventurous attempt landed for me. And yet, this novel will not work for everyone. Structurally, it asks a lot.

But! Perhaps? Maroon yourself with Choi's teenagers in a Houston-area performing arts high school. Wade through their morally murky activities among themselves and with the adults in their lives. You'll cringe more than once; you may laugh, too. The words have a way of cutting. The narrative will contort until you're not sure what's what, and, remember my favorite quote so far this year: "a reader does not need to know everything." (INSURRECTO!) In some aspects, TRUST EXERCISE is an absolute absurdist book, and yet the truth that teems from the absurdity is recognizable to any one who understands power dynamics.

More than anything, you won't be able to let go of this book; it'll leave you stranded at the end, with an itch to start it again, parched and seeking anyone who can help you parse the truth from fiction within a fiction that might even walk that tightrope of autobiographical, but who's to say? Well, the readers can interpret as much or as little as they want. Try it out, or stay away. The more curious and open the reader, the more one may enjoy. Or not!