The first chapter of this book had me hooked! The writing intrigued me and I had to know what happened! But sadly, I had to DNF this book at 51%, I couldn’t continue. The story was so incredibly slow. Sometimes I was interested despite the slow nature of the novel and at other times I just didn’t care what was happening in the slightest. I knew going into the book that this will probably be a slow burn horror, but the story could’ve been condensed A LOT! There are a lot of unnecessary scenes and the writing is so descriptive that it’s boring. I don’t need to know every little detail of every little thing. The book is only 200+ pages, but I feel like I’ve read 400 pages of nothing. The first chapter interested me so much that I still want to know what happened, but not enough to get through another half of this glacially paced book…

Thank you Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW (up to 51% in): child death, death of a parent, snakes, animal death, self harm, pedophilia