This one wasn’t my cup of tea. I don’t usually enjoy unreliable narrators. Not only is Anne unreliable, she’s also exceedingly unlikable. I know it’s on purpose, but I really didn’t like her. I wanted to empathize with her, to find some way of relating to her and then she’d do a 180 and throw another character right under the bus for no reason.
There’s a lot of repetition throughout the story. Lots of quotes from Victorian poets, or black and white Hollywood movies, which made Anna seem both pretentious and navel gazing. I found it exceedingly unlikely that her therapist wouldn’t have picked up on her substance abuse earlier, especially considering their sessions are in Anna’s home.
I really didn’t like the reveal three-quarters of the way through the book about the location of her family. I very much try to avoid books with this type of trauma/PTSD, not my vibe. I was very relieved early in the book when I was being misled, though I figured there had been some sort of serious incident that had a catastrophic outcome. The drawings and personal items were a huge red flag though, so I didn’t get too comfortable thinking things were fine.
The final reveal/ending felt trite. Villain explaining motivations, back story, and giving the opportunity for the power dynamic to shift, ugh. The book was well written, the characters well developed, but the plot devices and character types etc weren’t well aligned with my tastes.
