Kayla Savard

I love when a book that is not the type of book I would usually enjoy manages to surprise me. Going into this book, if you had told me that there is basically no plot, the mystery is never solved, and there were barely scenes let alone chapters, I absolutely would have assumed I would be cynically dragging my feet through the book, unable to connect and probably complaining a bit. Instead, I found myself nearly immediately clicking with the structure and voice of the story, and detaching from any subconscious expectations for where it would take me.

If my 4am existential crises were put to paper in a creative, yet comprehensible, fashion, I'd imagine it would end up looking something like this – and in one of those 4am moments, when I write things down that I know no one will ever read, I will definitely think of this book.

Took me months and I kind of hated the book, but then I kept reading and learned that “Bella” also hated this book so...I guess I just hated the book-within-the-book, but liked the actual book quite a lot? It's confusing.

I will admit that I am predisposed to disliking Shakespeare, so take this with a grain of salt, but I did not enjoy this story. My complaints mostly consist of me not caring about the characters, being unable to connect with them because they don't act like people, the villains being over-the-top comical villains who cackle and deliver mustache-twirling villain monologues about how evil they are, and the plot itself being stuffed full of “shocking” moments with no emotional weight attached to them – and don't even get me started on the "honor killing" of the rape victim. Not a fan.

I feel like the only reason this book is highly rated is because the author met Ted Bundy before he was a known serial killer, because there is nothing in the content of her actual writing to justify how often this book is recommended on non-fiction/true crime lists.

On very basic levels, this is just not a very well written book. The structure is choppy, the writing style bland, the perspective lacking in any real depth or emotion, and the level of detail very shallow. The thing with non-fiction is: you still have to be a good storyteller to do the facts and reality justice, and this book just is no where near the level it should be at given how often it is referenced.

The prose, imagery, and poetic nature of the setting was what really got me to 5 stars by the last page. Honestly, I don't think I am much of a fan of mysteries, because 99% of the time I end up feeling like the mystery/plot-twist distracted me from appreciating the details in the lead-up. Obviously that is the entire point of a mystery, so this is my own personal hurdle to overcome, but once I'd finished the book all I could think was that the “mystery” was rather unimportant to what the book was actually about. As I rated this 5 stars though, I found that there was much more to digest, which made up for that rather disposable (imo) element. I really look forward to re-reading this book already knowing the answers, so I don't have to be distracted away from the more philosophical/thematic ideas.

Buyer beware though: this is not a character book, and clearly wasn't meant to be a story where you connect with and deeply understand the narrator. In the end that didn't end up negatively impacting my experience because eventually I got it, but for like 75% of the book (when I didn't connect with the narrator and I had no idea what was happening because the mystery hadn't been solved) I was definitely having a hard time because I kept expecting to understand who he was as a fleshed-out character, instead of just accepting that he was more of a vessel for observing and meditating on the book's themes.

Basically: this book has a lot of elements that I normal wouldn't like, and yet somehow does it all so well that I ended up enjoying it much more than would have expected at the start.