I’m so glad I was asked to be an ARC reader for this book. I was ready to jump right in as soon as I got the email but I had to hold myself back and finish what I was doing, but literally as soon as I started reading, I was hooked.
I opened the link just after 3PM, and now at 9PM, I’ve finished the entire thing. The fact that I finished it in 6 hours really tells you how amazing this book is, I rarely ever finish books in one day, let alone in 6 hours.
This fantastic piece of writing focuses on an incredibly important message hidden under the guise of a monster named ‘The Caliginent’, and for the majority of the story, I genuinely believed it was a monster alongside the main character. The author did a truly amazing job at leaving us in the dark just like Saffron, the mc, was. It wasn’t about 3/4 of the way in that I realised that the ‘monster’ was just a metaphor when I was reading the Caliginent’s thoughts? dialogue? whatever it was speaking into Saffron’s mind, that i realised that there really was no physical monster terrorising Saffron and it was, in fact, just her own pain and suffering.
‘Trust no one’ is what the Caliginent repeated multiple times whilst it was trying to speak to Saffron and I honestly believed it too, I didn’t trust any of the characters until the very end when I realised it wasn’t actually as evil as both the main character and I thought it was. I didn’t trust Sylver, Ashiya, Moses, the mayor, not even Indie, and I didn’t trust myself for not trusting them. Hannah Clayton is an incredibly talented writer and the use of repetition throughout the book only goes to further prove my point. For example, Indie’s shoes that were way too big for his feet. You don’t understand how important the repetition of a seemingly nugatory statement like that is until you reach the very end. Everything point made in this book that doesn’t make sense all makes sense in the end as Saffron’s mind clears.
And the fact that her mind clears when she lets the Caliginent in makes the style of Hannah’s writing clear up too. Throughout the book, the writing is erratic since it includes what is happening in Saffron’s reality, the caliginent speaking to her, and flashbacks, so you really need to concentrate to understand what is going on and I believe this relates to how messy Saffron’s mental state is whilst she’s in the detention centre, and before she got there too. When Saffron’s mind clears, so does the writing. It seems calmer. It’s just Saffron and not everything all at once. It’s phenomenal.
I can honestly see this book being turned into a movie.
Thank you so much for letting me be an ARC reader, Hannah! It was a pleasure to read your book!!