📚 BOOK REVIEW 📚

This brief novella is meant to tell the tale of a suicidal MC who gets on the subway for the last time after a lifelong battle with depression and mental health struggles, only to find himself trapped in an M.C. Escher-esque underground trap.

Even though the metaphor is front and center from the get-go, I still went into this book with high hopes. Books that cover these topics can be emotional gut punches (in the best way possible), even though mental health issues are incredibly unique to each individual. I have my own history with this, so the criticisms below are not meant to make light of the author's experience. It's purely my reaction as a reader.

That being said, this was a painfully difficult slog of a book to get through. The interplay between plot and character study was a meandering and convoluted mess, mostly because there's no character development other than to establish the fact that he's depressed, and the plot (to the extent that it even exists) is incredibly random.

The repetitive language, use of pop culture references drags the whole thing down even further, and the introduction of another character in the subway serves absolutely no purpose. The only reason I think she was included at all was filler to bump the work into novella length instead of a short story.  I came away from this feeling that Ajram just doesn't have the writing chops to execute a readable story. This is ESPECIALLY reinforced because of the way the book ends (more on that at the end).

I wanted to like this book, and I hope it provided the author with what they needed), but I can't in good faith recommend this to anyone. As far as depression goes, this book is as bad as handling it as Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter was brilliant. It's not as bad as what I've read from Stephen Graham Jones, but boy-howdy it's close.

Plot device spoiler below:

What REALLY bothered me about the book was that Ajram used a "choose your own adventure" gimmick to end the book. Given the subject matter, this seems like such an awful thing to do to a reader. It also drove home the point that Ajram just didn't have the skill to write a real ending. Total cop-out.