This has been on my TBR ever since I saw @junebuganddarlin make a beautiful cross stitch kit with a phrase from the book. I highly recommend listening to the author read the audiobook. It feels like a spoken word poetry memoir. While not an upbeat feel-good summer read, this is an important piece of literature on abusive relationships in the queer community, which is evidently highly underrepresented in the field. I imagine the author also did a lot of healing through the writing process, and I felt honored to get to hear her intimate stories. While perhaps not the main focus, my favorite element of the text was Machado’s exploration of literary generes and motifs. My heart was happy to see words like picaresque and Bildungsroman. The opening section on the topic of archives is particularly sticking with me. I wish I had a classroom to go discuss that section in!