If you like looking at public transport schedules you will have a grand time with this one.

Personally, I was bored as hell. I liked the ending but getting there was so unbelievably uninteresting. The clues were either hard to follow timelines or huge deductions based on nonsense.

It’s not that I didn’t like the final explanation, it was interesting to read, but we didn’t have enough happening throughout the book for it to be satisfying end.

Rating this one too because of the other two short stories (“The Rocking-Chair” and “Old Water”).

Already did my review for The Yellow Wall-Paper but the other stories were also very enjoyable. Truly a collection of interesting women and fairly pathetic men haha

The Rocking-Chair was one of my favorites, this ideia of an untouchable goal slowly driving you insane, mixed with some supernatural… it was great! The Well was my least favorite, the eeriness was not as well crafted. It seemed a lot more real and uncomfortable, but the ending was satisfying.

An eerie tale about a woman in post-partum (I believe?) being dismissed by her doctor husband who thinks the best way to treat her mental illness is to simply ignore it and deprive her of any creative work... how fun.

The creepy vibes are amazing, the story is so short it’s kind of difficult to think much of it but I enjoyed reading it!

So it’s been a few days since I finished this book. I found this one very difficult to rate. On the one hand, I absolutely loved the beginning and the end, but everything in between… I didn’t enjoy one bit. I get it. I get the point, I get the idea, I get why the characters were written the way they were. I just didn’t find it enjoyable.

There were 2 big things that made it hard for me to like this book:

1. There is a severe lack of “show don’t tell”. Soooo many exposition dialogues, especially at the start, but it keeps going throughout the book.

2. Every character is a caricature of their flaws. Almost as if the author had a check list of the clichés. Sexism? “Are you on your period?” or “I bet you slept with everyone to get here” Racism? “You’re dumb and dirty because you’re not from around here” and so on. It made the characters so unnatural. It was so obvious what the author wanted me to think of each of them.

I can kinda see the friendship the main characters built, but I don’t understand the romance. It was very uncomfortable and forced. I’m aware that most of this is a matter of taste. I like books that are a lot more subtle. I can also respect that this book tackles important themes, but that in itself isn’t enough for it to be good to me.

With that being said, the first chapter was amazing 10/10. And the ending was lovely as well. Still, I can’t ignore how much I disliked everything else. The overall experience wasn’t for me.