I feel like this is a book that's just "if you know, you know" type of material. From traumatic childhoods, anxiety-ridden motherhood (and not the normal kind), to faking it until you make it lifestyles, if something of it touches onto your life it's so easy to get lost into the characters and their struggles because, well, they're yours too. And it's done so well, so true to the world, ugh. I wasn't sure if I wanted to cry for Clove or strangle her. There were a couple times I had to put my book down because the

"death-goggles" episodes she'd go into were so precise, so freakishly like my own inner voice, that I would shake and need to take a step back or remember I hadn't medicated myself yet haha.

Plot-wise I did guess some things half-correctly and to be honest I didn't even mind. I needed it to happen because I wasn't really there for the suspense, I was there for the conclusion - needed it absolve Clove (and myself). So, in a way, the suspense was real for me, but not in the typical thriller-type ways lol.

Plus, I cried. So points.

Pros:

 🌞 Extremely relatable MC - and if not, a glimpse into the mind that lives in daily terror.

 🌞  Real conversation about domestic violence, the trauma it causes and sustains in a person throughout their entire lives.

 🌞 Gorgeous prose and massive emotional payoff.

Cons:

 🌞 Not the typical thriller formula that is usually expected with the genre.

 🌞 Somewhat predictable plot if you're one to theorize early in a story.