I can’t stop thinking about how the author described the seemingly inconsequential moment of finding the warmth of your partner’s foot while lying in bed. Small moments that are easy to miss but mean so much in the make-up of relationships.

This book has been so hard to get through with the back & forth between before Leah left and after. It jumps around and not even in a smooth transition. It took me a week to get to 65% and that’s because I finally started letting my Alexa read it to me instead of reading it on my kindle 🫠

“Once, I woke to find him standing at the foot of my bunk, though when I asked him what he was doing he apologised quite genuinely and told me he must have drifted off.”

Nah i’d be pushing his ass out the pressure chamber thing cause we can’t start acting creepy like that when there’s only 3 of us😭😭😭

You think you aren't able to love correctly or the same as everyone else, except that of course you are, you just haven't had a chance to do it yet. You're not special, you're just waiting.

Awwww, Sam is a romantic! I wish someone had told me this when I was younger.

This book is so interesting so far , the pace is so jarring between Leah’s shorter chapters revealing so little so slowly about what has happened to her, while time skips ahead so quickly in Miri’s chapters with seemingly no progress to improve the situation they find themselves in. Both perspectives are gripping and claustrophobic but certainly in very different ways. I’m finding Miri’s more full of dread than Leah’s, despite how much more frightening Leah’s situation would be in reality, because Miri’s captures so well this very specific experience of watching a loved one struggling in the grip of serious mental illness and feeling unable to help them. There are things she could do, like forcing her to go to a hospital, but any of those options involve ignoring her autonomy and going against her wishes and that is such a scary and overwhelming line to judge when to cross. It feels frustrating to feel like a clear solution would be for Miri to just talk to her, but there is nothing like trying to have a conversation with someone who is incapable of having it, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with you and that you can’t fix. This horrible feeling like rejection, but it isn’t rejection because they’re not hearing you and they’re not choosing this, and you know it is worse for them than it is for you. Julia Armfield has captured that feeling of isolation and pressure perfectly and it’s so full of grief and I just hope we get to the hope eventually 🥲