This book was a short read, and I finished it in two days. The plot itself was fast paced and gets right into the horror of it. The dialogue made me get confused a lot when it was Felix or Eli talking. I adored the relationship that Asher had with his uncle, it was so sweet. This book does an excellent job showing how you can teach a young child about someone in their life being queer and how normal that is, we are just like everyone else. Along with the paranormal things going on, there is a lot of focus on grief and healing. It does a decent job of showing that there is no timeline to heal from a loss in your life. I was disappointed by how it ended but I want to read the sequel and see what happened next.

I was excited to read this for the adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story and a Trans main character. Most of the story is very slow paced for my liking, and there was way too much talk about war, over and over again. I think a lot of that could have been cut out and did not aid the plot. The creepy parts of the book I really enjoyed and wanted more of that. The last few chapters of the book are where shit finally picked up for me, and I think it should have happened way sooner in the book. I really wanted to know more about the fungus, but we don't even get much info till the very end. If the pacing had been better and the horror elements had been given more focus than the constant talk about war, I would have enjoyed this book a lot more.