Since the last book I read by this author disappointed me, especially because I had loved his previous ones, I feel like this book brought me back as a reader.
I’ve always had a soft spot for The Baltimore Boys, so the many little references and nods to it made the experience even more enjoyable for me.
The story is incredibly addictive. Despite the book’s length, I never really felt it, I just kept wanting to read more. The author really knows how to hook the reader and hold their attention from beginning to end.
On top of that, I didn’t see the plot twist coming at all. It completely caught me off guard.
“If you think you love this town, you’re mistaken, Writer. You love the memories you have of this place. Nostalgia is your problem. We convince ourselves that our past was happy and that our choices must’ve been the right ones. Whenever we think about the past and say to ourselves, ‘It was good,’ it’s just our sick brain distilling that nostalgia in order to persuade us that our past wasn’t in vain, that we didn’t waste our time. Because when you waste your time, you waste your life.”
"The problem with secrets is that we often forget about them ourselves. And one fine day they come back to the surface, like overflowing sewage."
"How does one repair a broken life? I still thought about my cousins, Woody and Hillel, and what had happened to them, and I concluded that we can’t really fix life; we can only rebuild it by giving it meaning."