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rougarou's review against another edition
Truly felt the psychological descent being weaved together.
squirrelallie's review against another edition
3.0
It's very awkward to rate/review a book when it's written by a "Goodreads Author."
haleylmorrison's review against another edition
3.0
I haven’t read a book that made me this uncomfortable or gross-feeling in a really long time. The setting and all the characters were so sad, pathetic, and bleak. Dustin and Aaron were well-written - the missing parts and weird stylized text were confusing but I understand what the author was trying to do. The changes in perspective were well-executed and did a good job conveying the confusion and uncertainty the characters were experiencing. I felt like it could have been longer and that the story wrapped up too quickly and neatly. I really liked seeing how weird Dustin really was as the story progressed and we heard from other characters. And was Aqil really the killer of all those boys? I was confused by the ending since it happened so fast. The writing was really descriptive and overall I really liked the book. The topics it covered were super interesting and I haven’t seen them touched on often (the Satanic panic and the consequences surrounding it).
marcel's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
4.0
LYNDA BARRY: What was a question you had at the beginning of the book that you didn't have at the end?
DAN CHAON: (long pause)Whether Dustin would survive. (another long pause) The questions that I was circling were interesting to me because there was no answer and so the book allowed me to kind of run a ring around those things and to look at them from a bunch of different angles and to drop closer and then draw further away from them. And those things include: what memory is, whether we can ever really see ourselves the way that we exist in the world, and the nature of deception and self-deception. Those were the ideas I was really interested in and I think the book does an entire tour of them, but they aren't something with an answer, right? It's like you're touring Ohio and someone says "So what's the answer?" There is no answer. But you learned a lot about Ohio.
DAN CHAON: (long pause)
dinarini's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
rmarcin's review against another edition
2.0
Very odd book about murders in the 1980s and the 2010s. The first set of murders is of Dustin's parents and his aunt and uncle. The next set of murders is when Dustin is grown and is a psychologist, and one of his patients, Aqil, gets Dustin interested in murders of college boys that are later found drowned. Dustin's family is dysfunctional, and his son Aaron is high on drugs most of the time. This is a creepy book.
horfhorfhorf's review against another edition
3.0
It took a while for me to get on board - longer than I'd usually keep reading, honestly, but I like Dan Chaon and figured he was up to something interesting. The way Chaon played with the typesetting and paragraph format as characters were thinking or ruminating grew on me the more I read. The teenagers were as believable as the adults, though Dennis grew harder to like the more we "learned" about him through the eyes of his siblings and son.
Hated the ending, but that seems to be how I feel about a lot of books that wrap up quickly and with a dose of finality as of late.
Hated the ending, but that seems to be how I feel about a lot of books that wrap up quickly and with a dose of finality as of late.
auroraboringallofus's review against another edition
3.0
Nearly a month after reading this, I have to come back to say: 1. It sticks with you, both the good and the bad; and 2. I wish I hadn't read it. There's some great insight and clever writing. I loved one character's observation that "dying is another thing you have to live through," -- that even as she dies of cancer, she is alive and living through this experience -- until I saw how this truth was used against other characters (especially at the end). I don't know if the sentiment was meant to be meditative or just more horror-fodder, and I don't know if it matters.