This started off well for me. A story that revolves around family, secrets, how those secrets can affect multiple generations, it had everything that I thought I would enjoy, but it got to a point where I was so bored while reading this and felt nothing for the characters to feel invested in the story.

There’s a lot of different timelines and povs which wasn’t a problem until things are left forgotten in order to introduce new plot lines. I liked the different povs, you get to learn so much about these characters and how they’re connected to each other, different point of views of the same events that will make you look at them differently depending on how each person went through said experiences. But the different timelines get messy when more information is pilled on top of the last one that hasn’t even been resolved.

The characters, which was what called me into reading this book, was the most disappointing part of it, I just couldn’t like any of them. I understand that every one of them went through something traumatic, had a lot going on in their lives and tough things to deal with, but they were also so selfish to the point of thinking their problems were the only important things everyone should be focusing on. Oh something happened between us that made us stop talking? And you actually have a pretty good reason for it? Well too bad because I feel this way and I have this reason to hate you. There was no empathy between the characters, no trying to understand the reasons as to why they made certain decisions, to the point of justifying homophobia because the other person decided to not deal with their shit and leave? Keeping secrets from someone because you’re scared of what they’ll think of you so it’s almost a relief that they died because now you don’t have to keep secrets anymore? What kinda sense does that make? And even the characters that did learn better and understood their mistakes, it didn’t feel satisfying enough and it felt more like a quick fix.

I can completely understand why so many people enjoyed this book, and I still think it had a nice story with a lot of potential, but it just didn’t work for me.

I love creepy disgusting horror books with beautiful covers that distract you from how weird the story is where you can never know what direction it will take.

I was immediately hooked with the writing and it made me very interested in checking more of H.S. Wolfe’s work. The descriptions of both the world and characters are very detailed that makes it so easy to imagine the story being told and the creepy vibes that are being conveyed. The second person pov makes the reading so immersive, which just adds to that horror and uneasy feeling.

Even this being a very short book, there’s still some complexity to the story and you get to understand the characters with the backstory you get from them. I was still left with a lot of questions surrounding both the world and characters, but more in a curiosity sense and wanting to know more about how everything worked.

Interestingly enough, with the amount of trigger warnings this had, I was expecting something a lot stronger and I even found it to have some sweet moments, specially towards the end with the main character’s choices and what that meant to them.

At the end of the day this is still a 30 page erotica, but I did find the story around that really interesting to read with the perfect amount of horror elements.