This, like A Headful of Ghosts, I finished and immediately wanted to read again. And I will. So this review is initial thoughts.

I read the whole afterword (usually a snoozefest for me) about how much research she did for this book and the organization that deal with this specifically, that she spoke with.

I don't know. About 20% in, I thought I figured out part of the plot and was right. About halfway in, I figured out more of it. But then the last half, 25% or so Ward kept piling on more twists. I had whiplash and kind of lost interest. It's like oh Bruce Willis is dead, oh the kid is dead, oh the whole world is dead, oh aliens show up too and they're dead too. Oh the matrix overlords playing chess with us are dead too. At a certain point, the twists take away from the story.

I did like that in the afterword she explains it was "a book about survival disguised as horror". I don't like when this topic is horror because this topic and other topics are people's real lives and they live just fine. It's about not making this topic scary. Like, are there scary books about obesity? I guess that one scene of Se7en, kinda. Are there scary books about cancer? (The Bus on Thursday?) Not really. These topics are fraught but people do live with them, and that's how I feel about this topic. People mired in this topic have enough of an uphill battle enough without turning their lives into "horror".

If the book had ended after 1 or 2 twists I would have liked it more, but maybe that is realistic to this topic, being perpetually surprised about reality. I don't know. It was okay. A little tough and overcooked.

I'll give it another go and see if anything feels better the second round.