5⭐️

Trigger warnings ⚠️ 
Animal abuse
Dog murder
Murder
Mutilation 
Blood

Mary is about to be 50, and strange things are happening to her. She is seeing things she shouldn't be seeing. Things that are disturbing. Everyone says it's "textbook " the change. Mary knows it's not. She knows she will have to return to her childhood home to learn the truth.

" I am just a story written in present tense. We all are. We are never finished. "

My Thoughts 

This book is disgusting in all the best ways. Not gag me gross but disturbing and vile. The story seeped into my marrow like an infection.

What hit me the hardest was realizing the whole book takes place in the span of 13 days. April 9th - 20th. It feels like a lot longer. If you're not paying attention to the chapters' headings, you might think it was months, the way the darkness crawls around you.

Wicker Man vibes. Purge vibes. Possession and cult vibes. All the horror vibes I could possibly want wrapped up in one amazing book. Dark atmosphere cruelly contrasts the light that Mary desperately wishes she lived in.

Mary is so well written. It's not often a man can write a woman this well. Especially a woman in the throws of perimenopause. This author has! I could feel and relate to her pain and frustration. She was real in all the best and worst ways. Multidimensional and not glossed over in femal perfection, a lot of authors try to portray.

Not only did he write one female character with depth and realism, but he also wrote many. In all walks of life. Teenage angst to elderly stubbornness. The attributes of the fairer sex are not lost on him. The good, the bad, and the ugly.