Trigger warning for death, rape, incest, and child abuse.

I frankly have no idea what sort of rating to give this book on a numerical scale. It held my attention but mostly in a rubbernecking car crash sort of way.

It ended so abruptly that I was confused. My libby app said there was a good forty pages left but it turned out to be a reading group discussion guide so I was caught off guard when I hit the last page.

What a bizarre book. I can see the morbid appeal of it, but mostly it turned out to be an exercise in frustration for me. The reluctance of the main characters to escape from where they’re locked up despite several, several opportunities is maddening.

All that said, I read to the end, so that has to count for something. Wouldn’t really recommend this to anyone unless they just feel morbidly curious like I did.

I feel like this book is TERRIBLY misrepresented by so many people who either didn't read it at all or read it once when they were too young and then didn't revisit it as adults and decided that difficult subject matter = A BAD BOOK, which is terribly ironic considering the children literally point out mid-book that refusing to even acknowledge sensitive "sinful" subjects other than to express how sinful they are leads to people not understanding those concepts enough to even make conscious decisions about those things, and not understanding what it is that makes those things sinful to begin with........ (Don't get me started on how destructive puritan culture has been to literature and media time and time again, oh my god.)

. The narrative voice can be challenging at the beginning when Cathy is young but as time goes on it becomes more complex and poetic. It is not a PLOT heavy book, but I mean come on, it literally tells you this is about kids locked in an attic, and that is not terribly exciting. That's the point. It is eerie, and full of dread and fear, but mostly it is isolating, cramped, frustrating, and confusing.

This book requires you to appreciate nuance. There are themes of who decides what is evil, is ANYONE purely evil? What is the line where you have to accept that someone you love has changed in a way that makes them unrecognizable? How much of our personality is pre-determined and how much is a product of our environment? What is the line between good intentions and terrible actions? How much does fear of something happening make that exact thing more likely to happen? And how much is too much to take before you decide to take fate into your own hands?

This book is challenging and gripping. It is definitely not for everyone, but it's a great, complicated, gothic novel, one that's meant to make you sit and ponder things instead of taking it in like a movie and then tossing it, and I'm excited to read more in the series to see what life holds for everyone past the end of this one.