yknow what. back when me and my ex-gf were together, we discussed possibly starting a band. and now after having broken up and having experienced personal growth™️, i see why that would've been a terrible idea.

The Maidenheads is basically "hey, but what if my ex and i HAD started a band?" i can guarantee it would've gone as badly as it does in this book.

going to be so honest here, the "humanity fucking died in the prologue and now the rest of this book is chill bug fact time. also somehow computers still work extremely far into a future with no humans" is an extremely large and very visible elephant in the room

this book has 3 extremely distinct sections, which i will name here: 'abuse, trauma and death', 'lesbian bear interlude', and 'reckoning with the earlier trauma, abuse, and death'.

i really don't intend to make light of this book, it deals with some very intense topics, and i truly enjoyed (is that the right word?) it while reading. but the thing is, that doesn't excuse the fact that it feels severely disjointed between the three sections. the chunk i described earlier as 'lesbian bear interlude' feels like it's from a completely different book. a good book, i'd like to add! it was an extremely good section! but so different in tone from the rest of On Sundays She Picked Flowers that it was jarring to say the least.

most of my love for this book is just based in how much i connected to the story, and Jude in particular. on an emotional level, it was incredible, and i eagerly await whatever Yah Yah Scholfield writes next. i truly cannot describe how rare it is to read a book where a character (talking about Jude here) struggles with self-harm, and even rarer for things like scars to be mentioned as just another thing about her. admittedly, that did hit very hard for me, and Scholfield's handling of that is a big part of why i loved this book so much.

overall: bad structuring, but incredible emotional depth.

definitely the most deeply fucked up T. Kingfisher book... doesn't mean i didn't enjoy it though!

upon finishing Wolf Worm, it pretty much immediately rocketed up into my top 3 favorite T. Kingfisher books (the others being What Moves the Dead and Thornhedge). T. Kingfisher has a tendency to write the same protagonist over and over, while also including very similar humor in each book (which i don't fault one bit! every author has a style), but i feel like Wolf Worm breaks out of that mold a bit (mainly in protagonist. the humor is similar, but imo it works extremely well here). if you like southern gothic, you'll probably love this.

i beg of you, heed the content warnings if you have fears of bugs. like i said earlier, in my opinion this is the most fucked up "how could you think of this. what made you decide to put this into words (complimentary)" T. Kingfisher book.