this is a memoir where all i can really say is that im so glad cheryl was so open with her life in this book, giving us readers such an intimate look into her story as she took us all along with her on the pacific crest trail. 

this really is one of those books someone like me cant really add anything to; all i can say is that its an INCREDIBLE book that i think almost everyone should read.

man...idk what i even really want to say about this book other than i really didnt care much for it :/ aside from all the characters being Truly unlikable and the story being painfully boring and predictable, it just ended up making me feel sad. thats not always a bad thing, but for this book it is since theres not much to redeem it. i really only gave it the rating i did because it was realistic. other than that...it just wasnt very good.

oh...this book truly is wonderful; its so sad yet so beautiful and full of hope. its a tragedy through and through - of everyone losing finn, of june losing toby - but its full of such love that it doesnt feel as heartbreaking as it could. and the love really is so rich in this book. june loves finn - i do have my issues with that, but i understand why she feels what she feels - and finn and toby loved each other and danni loved her brother and she loves her children and june loves greta and finn loved everyone and love...its everywhere in this book, for both the good and the bad. its the fuel for this book and the characters and it makes this book what it is. and thats why it hurts so much because love only does so much, only goes so far and then when you can no longer love that person it goes - where? you have to keep it inside yourself because the love you have one person is for them; you cant put it on someone else. so you keep it inside and you hold it close the way you held the person you loved close. and like...god. i could wax poetic about this book forever. its just so good. and the title...it hurts because at first to me it meant that june could tell the wolves about finn, she could tell that hes home but by the end of the book is dead, the wolves are dead, and now the wolves can tell finn that june is home. like...god. pain.

i dont think ive ever read a book where i have so VISCERALLY hated an entire cast of characters this much ohhhhhh my GOD. genuinely the only likeable characters are nancy and eleanor,  and eleanor turns out horrible in the end (not unexpected at all, just sad) and nancy ends up dying and being the scapegoat for everything, even though she is the only genuiely Good Person (see what i did there, haha ← chanelled the author of the book for that, do u see how annoying it is) in the WHOLE cast of characters. like...im sorry, but what the fuck? like i am genuinely asking: what the fuck. this book just REEKS of being written by someone who has no idea what on earth theyre writing about. and beyind that, the story is so wholly unsurprising, unshocking, un-fucking anything enjoyable. its a spectacle. it really is. its so truly incredible how badly everything came together.

none of the twists feel earned since they were all so easily guessable (like noooo way, mary is the serial killer reincarnated??? oh say it isnt so...surely nobody guessed that at all) and because of that, fell entirely flat. like never once was i caught off guard by a piece of info or shocked or felt as if anything we learned put anything into place snce everything felt obvious from the beginning. like we KNOW there's something wrong with mary from the beginning. we know she killed her neighbours dog. we know that. its obvious. like...i dont even know what else to say about that. it was all just SO badly implemented.

also like it truly is a little mind-blowing how this book still managed to drive home the old 'the serial killer is just a crazy psycho on the loose' despite the fact that i dont think that was meant to be the case...? thats an entirely horrible trope in and of itself and the fact that this book has it in it, just a somewhat misdrect from the entirely obvious plot point, is BAFFLING to me. like it adds nothing the story. nothing. and like..are we supposed to care about mary? are we supposed to sympathize with her? feel pity for her? i hate her. i wish she died out in that fucking desert. i wish the furies would have clawed her eyes out and skinned her the way the members of the flock do to their sacrifices. thats what she deserves. she is a horrible woman, through and through, with no redeeming qualities. i dont believe for even a SECOND that she was ever acting not of her own volition and that its all blamed on 'being the reincarnation of damon cross', aside from the few times he Actually took her over. but before that? before she knew? no; that was all mary.

the only few good parts about this is, at least, that the book is at least self-aware. i appreciated that there was a little bit of satire against true crime culture and it did seem to have (some) insight into what women g through during their lives and how they change during menopause, but those parts were few and far between.

the book also just isnt scary; except, maybe, scary how bad it is.

and to answer the question in the authors afterword which is, directly; 'Was this a story I should have pursued? Or should I have let it scratch in vain inside the haunted trunk of ideas that sits inside every writer's brain?' yes; you absolutely should have locked it away and never looked at this idea again, for fucks sake.

this book made me so sad :( there was tragedy and loss and sadness at every turn for these girls (especially near the end...my GOD) and knowing that these places existed for so long and in so many places...its so horrible. im glad that teagan got out in the end and will hopefully live a good life after everything that happened, im so sad for nora and heartbroken about lea and noras baby...why did they BOTH have to die it was so sad. this one with stick with me for a while.

this is a really solid book and a great start to a series :o i thought the mechanics of the clocktower and how it translated to colton was quite cool and original. i really enjoyed watching danny grow and open up to colton, and i thought all the relationships between characters were realistic and quite sweet, even if his mother was a bit hard to deal with sometimes. i also love that the fairytales danny told colton about in the beginning had running themes through the story and that fate had Such a big role in it overall. i do think the ending was a bit fantastical with his father coming back after the town was no longer Stopped (i would think the people there would be a bit more confused, though i do understand the book wanting to end kind of like a fairytale) but it wasnt enough to take anything away from the story as a whole.

this book was...fine. the pacing was alright for the most part but it really fell out near the end :/ only a few things of significance happened in the beginning, it was quite boring in the middle, and then in the end EVERYTHING seemed to happen in the span of only a few chapters. the lore could have been expanded upon SO much more and really ended up boiling down to heaven and hell just being remade, which is fine, but certainly isnt what i thought the book was going to be about. overall, it could have been a lot better and was quite a let down.

at 50% through this book i should feel SOMETHING for these characters but i really dont care abt any of them at all, and seeing as i havent read any of this book in months i really dont have any want to continue on. it was so BORING like oh my god

ebook loan for this ran out at my library and they no longer have a copy of it and i really dont care abt this book enough to buy a copy of it lmao