In the author’s note at the beginning of this book, White notes that the truth of history is often more horrifying than anything we can make up and there is definitely a lot of darkness and pain within this tale. In many ways, this book hits all the harder than White's debut Hell Followed With Us because it feels so much more grounded and that just makes it all the more horrifying.

Something that I really appreciate about the way that White writes about transness is the fact that it is not neat and doesn't necessarily fit the mould of what some might think of as a trans person. In reading this book, it feels as though White is giving me language to talk about transness that I hadn't found for myself. I connected with the way that Silas simultaneously was able to hold the fact that he is a boy and the fact that society has seen him as a girl and the way he has experienced the world as a result of that.

There are many moments of this book that made me uncomfortable but that was exactly the intention of those scenes. This is a story that may cut particularly deep for some readers and, as always, please make sure that you look into content warnings before picking it up. This book is well worth the time and the pain.