"I hope it's not an invasion of your privacy." Says Theo after invasing her privacy every chance he gets

okay but actually the "there she is" be getting so highkey annoying, I can literally feel this man (and the author) being so smug thinking they created the hottest catchprase but it's actually doing nothing for him

Several folks mentioned the insane amount of em dashes, and they're right. As a professional writer, the internet can pry an em dash from my stubborn fingers before I let AI take a good thing from me. That said, goodnight! Everywhere a comma might've done the trick, there's an em dash.

Thankfully, the story's good enough to ignore them (mostly). I'm 18 chapters in and only kind of know what's going on. I like it though. Sometimes first person POV can read like a diary entry but Michaelides is striking a decent balance between inner monologue, story, and quick exposition. Theo's giving us just enough information to put the pieces together, and it's very clearly filtered through his (increasingly) flawed perspective.