Mystic River

What a heavy book. Heavy in so many ways. For once it felt pretty long. Especially the first half. Don't get me wrong, I've read and enjoyed longer books, but with this I felt like I've read so much, when in hindsight not very much happened story wise. But what happens is character development. And it's so good in it's own dirty way. Which brings me to the second heaviness: the setting. My god is this setting dark and depressing. There is not one(!) main or side character with a happy background. Nobody's experiencing something good for them. It's just a endless down spiral right to the end. And it fits perfectly. There should be nothing happy in all those topics.

The book keeps you on the edge and guessing. And the ending is so perfectly written, that I totally forgot the slower pace in the first half.