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purrson's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Death, Gore, Grief, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Violence, Blood, and Classism
Minor: Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Self harm, Death of parent, and Abandonment
therainbowshelf's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Rape
Minor: Death of parent
Internalized homophobianickoliver's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first. Especially the first half talked around a lot - the scenes kept repeating, the supernatural was confusing, the plot stagnated, the characters infuriated a bit. It was hard to convince myself to pick up the story again, knowing the main character would slog through life and not really acknowledge the problematic nature of others (mainly Sam for a very long time). And for a while, all that was happening was Sam pressuring Andrew to come out with him, a lot of alcohol and drugs, and car races. However, I have read a review (this one by Chai) where they talked about how this was kind of justified, since it emphasised Andrew's aimlessness and his grief. He’d just lost the most important person in his life and was utterly lost; how was he supposed to care about anything but finding out properly what happened? But still, it didn’t make for an enthusiastic reader.
Thankfully, after a while, things started to come together. While it was fairly predictable where the mystery surrounding Eddie’s death was concerned - the villain was easy to clock as the villain quite early on, to the point where I almost convinced myself it couldn’t be them because that was way too obvious and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to even expect a plot twist-, amusingly enough, I was way more invested and cared for the characters a lot more and suddenly had little trouble turning the pages (for a while at the beginning of the week, I literally read about twenty pages a day; later, that was tripled).
Like I mentioned above, the supernatural elements were a bit confusing. I understood the majority of it, but a lot of the time, I didn’t understand them while they were happening. And some parts I still don’t. It’s like I understood the overall theme of it, but if you asked me details about what exactly happened when Andrew was dealing with the revenant and being shown memories and waking up in deer carcasses or with slit wrists, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. That was a bit frustrating at times, since it was a pretty big part of the story.
My favourite thing about the book was the way Andrew grappled with his sexuality. At the beginning of the book, he wasn’t aware that he liked men and that he'd been in love with Eddie. Or rather, he seemed to have suppressed it so hard he wasn’t even aware that’s what he did. But when he went to Nashville to try and find out what happened to Eddie, it turned out that everyone thought he and Eddie had been a couple, and in all the six months he’d been there alone, Eddie’d never bothered to correct anyone. And that opened the dam inside of him - once he was made aware of it, it spilled out of him and he couldn’t put it back.
It was just written about so well! So much about his past explained why he and Eddie never went there, why it went unacknowledged. There was also a character named Del who added an interesting insight into their relationship. She was Andrew’s ex-girlfriend but had also been with Eddie at the same time as well.
I also appreciated that Eddie wasn’t painted as this perfect boy who would’ve made Andrew happy for the rest of his life if they’d gotten together. There were a lot of things said about him that made me side-eye him a little, which I didn’t like at first, but then I realised I kind of did? He wasn’t the perfect victim that was written about in a almost otherworldly way.
There was a little romance between Andrew and another male character, which I really wasn’t on-board at first; this other character had a lot of (implied and shown) racist and homophobic friends, which was something that was never really addressed once the romantic interest was explicitly there. But surprisingly, I did warm up to him. I also liked the way their relationship was built up, because it wasn’t all too obvious from the start that he was going to be a romantic prospect? At least not obvious to me, because he wasn’t really on my radar for that. In any way, he was mostly just a means to an end at first and read as just really bad news, and while the start of their romance was a bit sudden, it didn’t completely come out of the blue. It was just a lot more subtly built up than in other books.
The side characters were fascinating and fleshed-out. There was Riley, Sam’s cousin and Andrew’s roommate, who helped with the latter’s quest for answers and had himself a penchant for the supernatural. He was also trans, and I honestly loved the way Mandelo wrote about that. It was just things like a noticing of top surgery scars, hints that Riley used to have a different name, that he'd shown up on Sam's doorstep with a shaved head. That was it. There was never a big deal made out of anything, no “A-Z of Being Trans”, no Riley explaining himself in big fat letters so that even cis readers will understand what was going on. It was so nonchalantly that I even convinced myself for a short while that I interpreted Riley as trans but that that wasn’t actually what Mandelo implied.
The villain of the story was interesting, because they weren't so obvious at first. At the contrary, the first time they showed up, I even complimented the tactful and kind way they talked to Andrew. Like I mentioned above, it was fairly in-your-face later on, but it wasn’t at first, and they weren’t acting like a villain in an obvious way even later on. You knew they were based on subtle things like the way they treated certain people, and
An aspect of the story I really appreciated was the criticism of racism in academia (especially for a book that’s adjacent to dark academia a bit). There was a side character named West who was supposed to mentor Andrew. He’d been at the school for almost seven years and his dissertation kept getting rejected. It was very obvious that it was due to racism, especially once you learnt about
Overall, this was a bit of a challenging trip and a half. The characters were infuriating at times and the book was pretty repetitive and slow for like, at least half of it, but I loved the way it explored internalised homophobia, masculinity, and coming to terms with being too late. It made me feel very raw and emotional at times. Also, while I gave the book 4.5 stars at first, I bumped that up to 5 stars because I literally didn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the entire year (for context, this was the very first book I read in 2023).
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, and Alcohol
Minor: Child abuse, Transphobia, Car accident, and Death of parent
theoldestbennetsister's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Gore, Sexual content, Blood, Grief, and Alcohol
Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, Cursing, Drug use, Homophobia, Racism, Suicide, Violence, Vomit, Death of parent, Murder, and Classism
Minor: Animal death, Cancer, Child death, Transphobia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, and Car accident
cold_boy's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Suicide and Violence
Moderate: Homophobia
Minor: Death of parent
onemamareads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Suicide, Violence, Murder, and Alcohol
Moderate: Child death and Death of parent
remimicha's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug use, Homophobia, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Racism, Medical content, Car accident, Death of parent, and Classism
fanboyriot's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Ghosts
Chaotic Gays
Spooky Fantasy
Dark Academia
Fast Cars and Stupid Decisions
I read a review that said this was like a gay fever dream and that sums up a lot of it. The supernatural elements and the overall eerie atmosphere were really lovely. It was well written, however, the romance was kind of meh at first, by the end of the book it was better but it just felt like there could have been more development with Andrew and Sam. Overall, the ending was nice and I would definitely re-read this again.
Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Biphobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, and Gaslighting
bookenbee's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Body horror, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Vomit, and Murder
Moderate: Animal death, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, Terminal illness, Medical content, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Colonisation, and Classism
Minor: Animal death, Racism, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
jvanfosson's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Body horror, Death, and Murder
Moderate: Gore, Misogyny, Suicide, Blood, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Death of parent