I was conflicted on what to rate this book because my main gripe with it is the editing. This is a 277 page book with 5 chapters. It felt impossible to get through at times because after being halfway through the book I was still one chapter 3. That being said, this is the first book that said out loud things I had always kept secret, even into adulthood, and it was so freeing to read. As someone with bipolar, this book was such a vivid and real tale of what having such big emotions, so young, feels like. The black beast is a full grown adult in a 10 year old's mind and the 10 year old is not ready for those thoughts, concepts, and feelings yet there they are. The emptiness of depression, the suicidal ideation, the complete loss of control of mania, and the relief of booze is something I think everyone who has struggled with this can relate to.

As a survivor, this is one of the best memoires I've read

Dnf

Dnf
CW:SA
This book immediately glorifies SA and having sex with underage boys as just a normal gay thing by having the adult narrator describe the main character's childhood and teenage body in sexual ways, specifying that he found him extremely attractive. There is then a romance between the main character and a German soldier, who is an adult as well, that is described in an extremely romanticized way. This is such a harmful troupe. The author then describes a graphic rape, enforcing another harmful troupe of queer characters experiencing trauma, including the graphic details of that trauma, for being queer in almost every narrative about us. I assume the author is queer but that does not justify writing about a child in this way. These things happen but they are not normal and they are not ok and they are certainly not romantic.