Overall this started out being pretty fun, but there were some aspects of this that bothered me.

Charlie's character is still giving me whiplash. In the first book he was "popular", now he's the big fucking nerd. (I think he was technically always a bit of a nerd, but for some reason people kept calling him popular.) I understand as a plot devise that they wanted Nick to discover Charlie

had an eating disorder, but I can't really see how his friends could be considered good friends and none of them had picked up on it during all this time.

Something else about this that's bothering me is that it's already been established (in this one or the previous volume, I can't remember) that Charlie cuts himself and he also has an eating disorder? That is kind of a lot to pile onto one character's shoulders, especially in a YA series.

Plus both of these things were very briefly spoken about on Charlie's side and we're only seeing them more in depth from Nick's side, which isn't really helpful in understand how these things work mentally for people who are actually dealing with them. I'm not super happy with how that's being handled so far.

 

 Oh my goooood. This was definitely the worst book by far. I spent half the time bored out of my mind (which is surprising since there's a war going on) and half the time just hoping it would be over with. If these weren't characters I already knew and liked, I would have DNF'd this. 

 My husband made me listen to this on a road trip and I wasn't particularly interested in the subject matter, but I did end up enjoying it for the most part. There was A LOT of repetitive story-telling that drove me a little up the wall and the author has a tendency to meander off on tangents when you just want to hear more about the main subject matter, but once we did finally arrive there, it was nice to learn about. 

 My brain legitimately cannot keep up with listening to this. The wording is too confusing to me. Maybe it could be easier to read, but I don't read books in print anymore, really, so trying to listen to this with the way it's structured is practically impossible for my ADHD brain to wrap around.

 Meh. There was a lot of great representation in this, but it also felt a bit flat overall. Not enough depth in the characters and their relationships with one another and the romance was pretty instalove. While the interviews and fanfiction and such are fun, overall they don't add anything to the story and that space could've been served better by working more with the characters. I think everything felt more tell and not show. 

 Maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't read both Starling House and For the Wolf this year, too. As it was, I did read those two first and didn't care for them all that much. I liked this one better, but the whole "woman trapped inside a house with a grumpy guy who eventually falls in love with her and her with him" bit is tired and played out. Even though some are adult and some are YA, they all work out in very similar ways and I just can't find myself enjoying them all that much anymore. I tried to read Uprooted this year too and couldn't even get into that one at all, but it was basically the same thing as these three.

Despite the lackluster story structure, though, I did enjoy the characters in this and the overall atmosphere was nice. And my melancholy is not due to this story being bad, just the repetitive nature of the narrative that I've already seen twice this year. 

 Like Patric, the human condition has always been fascinating to me. But like most people, our interactions with those who have sociopathy is terribly limited, especially to what we see in the media and via true crime.

I hate that so much of the world sees psychopathy and sociopathy as one thing when there have always been differences and I think that Patric did a good job showing that in her book. It's hard to read as someone who is overly empathetic, because I hate that people have to grow up with this hanging over them. I also felt frustrated at times with how circular things could feel, as though Patric wasn't getting any better at being able to manage her diagnosis even when she worked so hard at it. I imagine that this is how people who are close to a sociopath feel a lot of the times and I'm sure that the frustration is equally felt for the person who is a sociopath because it's really hard to understand as someone who can't fathom not having these emotions.

Overall, a very interesting dive into a sociopath who wants to be a good person and I wish her all the luck in the future helping others out there like her but also in making more advancements in the field and hopefully pulling back that stigma that we've slowly started to do with other mental health disorders. 

 Julia Whelan should be the narrator for all my romance reads from now on. I love her male voices and I don't know why. 

 It wasn't <i>bad</i>, but once they got together I kind of didn't see any reason to keep reading. There wasn't anything exciting happening anymore. 

 It was nice to get a deeper look into Paul's psyche. Hearing him on the podcast, he sounds really carefree and like he has his personal and professional lives balanced but it sounds like he has had to work really hard to accomplish that. He truly is an inspiration and we're so lucky to have people like him in the world who are willing to dedicate themselves so completely to their work (even to the detriment of their own health and happiness).

Unfortunately, I didn't find the book's writing to be very compelling. I am not sure if it was the way that it was compiled or not, but I found myself more interested in the way Paul wrote about his personal life than he did about his work and his cases. Usually I am all in on the cases and just meh on the personal anecdotes, but I felt sort of the opposite on this and I'm not totally sure why. Something was lacking in how he wrote about his casework and it really came across in the prose.