Wow. I mean, just wow. I really don't even know how to collect my thoughts about this one. Courtney Summers took everything that made [b:Sadie|34810320|Sadie|Courtney Summers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556559178l/34810320._SY75_.jpg|56026767] great and amped it up to ten. This book is incredibly dark and incredibly intense, and it asks huge questions. The structure of the book is brilliant - Lo Denham's bitter, grief-clogged voice is essential to the book's narrative, and the distance from which we perceive Bea's chapters is striking, especially considering the book's final revelations.

Summers also asks a lot of her readers: she asks for empathy and understanding, even for her most deeply complex characters. She asks them to think about what truth is, what it means, and how to find it. But mostly, how to accept it. This is not an easy book, and there are moments in it that I still don't quite understand (

Spoiler

still not sure why Lo began sleeping with Lev

). But it tugs on you until the last moments, and is not one I'll ever be able to stop thinking about.

What I also don't think is accurate about this book's marketing (or maybe, really just the expectations of Summers' readers) is that it's meant as a mystery. I don't think that was the purpose, especially not if we're thinking of mysteries in their most tropey sense, and it does a disservice to the story to try and fit it into that box. This book is meant to make you question how easily you too might be duped into believing Lev's BS, and I think that makes people uncomfortable.