A masterclass in complex characters!! Dinan weaves past and present POVs together with impeccable pacing and flow. Max is so funny and real and complicated, Vincent is deliciously flawed, and I could not get enough of them together. The parallels between Vincent’s past and Max’s present were compelling, and the reader is given a fantastic omniscient perspective as more is revealed about Alex. I appreciated how well-rounded the side characters were, how they had lives both on and off-page, and how those events showed up in and impacted the main narrative. Incredible literary fiction, and an easy 5 stars.

Hilarious and heartbreaking, Langbein perfectly encapsulated the impossibility of being a teenage girl trying to discover herself. Not since My Dark Vanessa have passages about sex and self worth and manipulation and desire and discovery hit me so deeply. Jean and Monica’s relationship perfectly balances the heaviness of the story, and keeps the reader looking through a feminist lens without being preachy about it. The prose is rich and lush and darkly funny, the tension is exquisite, the side characters jumped off the page, and the story of Jean from Hoboken could not have been concluded any other way. This is a contender for book of the year for me, and I can’t wait to reread it.

One of the best and most thought-provoking horror novels I have ever read. The explorations of grief and fear and impossible decisions was so artful and nuanced, and the plot kept me on my toes the entire time. What do you do when there are truly no good decisions to be made? Cassidy’s writing is phenomenal. Jess jumped off the page, as did all the characters, even those with very short on-page appearances. This raises deep questions about what it means to be a good parent, a good child, a responsible citizen. We see fear controlling everything and everyone in the story, and it ultimately lends itself to an ambiguous and fascinating conclusion.