Sundial

read for strangeathon 2022: different format

okay so brother meets the push and the strangerville pack from the sims 4 😭 this had the messed up family dynamics and exploration of that isolated family with the evil child/unreliable narrator vibes or the push and the scientific desert testing of the sims 4 strangerville pack.

this book follows and mother and her child as they leave their home to take a hiatus in the desert at the mother's childhood home due to the fact that she believes her child, poisoned and virtually abuses her other child. the mother then begins to tell her daughter about her own childhood in the desert and is known to us as an unreliable narrator but we are unsure why for most of the book. we also get the perspective of the child but she is also a bit unreliable. the child take bones of animals and often see these animals and someone that is the pale version of her. they are like imagined friends but something feels off.

i really enjoyed the beginning where we are learning about the family and seeing why the mother takes her child to the desert, it gives classic domestic thriller/the push vibes and i was also really intrigued once they went to the desert but that part did start to drag for me a little bit and felt a bit long. this is similar to brother a bit with the slower family exploration. there is some animal testing on dogs which can be triggering for some but it didn't bother me personally. that part honestly interested me a lot and how that played out was so fascinating.

the ending was so fast paced and there was so many twist that kept me guessing what was going to happen next in both timelines and i love how everything aligned in the end. the writing was so good and you can really see the purpose of the slower parts to cause tension for the ending.

thank you to tor nightfire, catriona ward, and netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review