I love reading books by women who've suffered from depression, mostly because I think it normalises a lot of my own thoughts and experiences, and I think it's the poignant but achingly relatable descriptions of depression and trauma in this book that make me give it a 4 stars.

This book is extremely emotional, and readers should be aware that there is a lot of triggering content in this relating to death, suicide, and rape.

I deeply related with so much of the content in this novel, being a lesbian who's also suffered with depression, and some of her descriptions of the physical sensations that come with being depressed are so beautifully poetic.

My only real criticism of this book would be the ending - **spoilers ahead** so stop here if necessary.
***The book is largely about a woman who is planning to kill herself, and she goes on a trip around the world beforehand where she meets different people with different stories that influence the way she sees the world. Now the first part of the book explains the woman's life (growing up as a lesbian in Taiwan at a time when LGBT visibility was a lot more scarce, her violent sexual assault, her previous relationships, and what leads her to finally make up her mind on killing herself), and then the end of the book consists of her trips, and the people she meets, and I cannot stress enough how beautifully the author handles all of this content.
However, my problem comes in at the very end of the book, when the protagonist reaches her final destination, the place where she plans to commit suicide, and is more-or-less saved by her ex-partner and friends from her 'old life' in Taiwan. Now, ignoring the fact that they were miraculously in the right place at the right time, my problem is that as she wakes up to see them in the hospital bed, they essentially 'convince her' out of her depression and suicidal ideation, and it just felt off. As someone whose also lived with suicidal ideation most of her life, I can fairly confidently say that you can't be convinced out of it in a single conversation. Teaching someone to value their own life is something that takes a considerable amount of time to achieve and in many cases may not even be possible. Essentially saying "No, you were so loved all this time" is just not a convincing argument to stop someone from being depressed, or from wanting to kill themselves.
If I'm honest, having tried to write about depression before myself as well, I got the impression that the author didn't know how to finish the story maybe because those feelings haven't been resolved yet for herself either? I could be wrong, but it just felt like an unrealistic, feel-good ending was shoe-horned into the ending of the book because the author wasn't sure how to end it. ****

However, I do want to caveat that criticism by reiterating how utterly beautiful and well-written the rest of this book was. Reiji Morris' simple prose really lend themselves well to the subject matter. If you suffer or have suffered with suicidal ideation yourself, it really is a great book because you feel so seen in the ways that the protagonist thinks about life and death and how she deals with and describes her depression. It's poetic, relatable, and deeply moving as a novel, and even despite the odd choice of ending, I'd still recommend it to anyone interested in queer Asian literature, Taiwanese culture, and female depression.