It’s quite slow and disorganized for the first half. It’s told non-linearly for seemingly no reason, the author struggles with maintaining a voice for each character, and the “reveal” doesn’t come until quite a bit in. This is not a “spooky” book like I was expecting, much of the discomfort and anxiety it induces is comparable to that of listening to a true crime podcast or reading a news article on a grisly murder (both sensations that really aren’t for me). It’s not really a book that builds its tension on atmosphere, it’s much too literal for that.

My number one issue with the book is that for a novel with such significant child characters, the author really doesn’t know how to write them. Winston is 11, Honeychile is 14, and yet they sound a decade apart. On the other hand, Troy and Maya, 6 and 9, seem to have the affectations of middle schoolers at least. There’s no consistency into how any of these children talk or act, which is fine in other novels because they’re usually not the focus of the story. The author relies on a few key vocal quirks which get very grating very quickly.

I also did not care for the pop culture references at all. They all seemed shoehorned into the novel, giving it a dated feel despite it only being a few years old. The entire books feels like it came to someone in a great dream, unfortunately they didn’t have the chops to write it.

Lurid, painful, and delicious. It felt less like reading a novel and more like someone was pouring tea into my eyes