A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing

by Alice Evelyn Yang

A dark, folkloric family saga that moves through history to the present day, exploring the legacy of colonialism and how pain echoes through generations.

Qianze has not seen her father—her Ba—in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday. But then she gets a call—there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he’s asking for her. This man isn’t the Ba Qianze remembers: he’s aged beyond recognition, struggling with dementia and alcoholism, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.

While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba unveils fragments of their family history, from his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother’s youth in Manchuria under Japanese occupation. Soon Qianze finds herself plagued by strange visions—fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.

Told through the eyes of three generations, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a glimmering tale about forgiveness, inheritance, and the inescapability of fate.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Horror, Historical, China

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 2026

About the author

Alice Evelyn Yang is a Chinese American writer from Norfolk, Virginia. Her work has been published in MQR, AAWW's The Margins, and The Rumpus, among others. She is the recipient of the 2022–23 Jesmyn Ward Prize from MQR and completed her MFA in Fiction in 2022 at Columbia University, where she was awarded the Felipe De Alba Fellowship and nominated for the Henfield Prize. A BEAST SLINKS TOWARDS BEIJING is her first novel.

Reviews

[Marquise]

Unfortunately a DNF at 44% for me, Chief. Seems like this is DNF Week at House Marquise...

[DianaRose · Rating 4 out of 5]

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc!

for a debut, this was full of human complexities and utterly dark…

a beast slinks towards beijing is a magical realism novel that follows three different generations of a family that endured endless trauma through the japanese occupation of manchuria, the cultural revolution, to the present day where qianze’s father abandons her on her birthday.

ultimately, this greatly emphasized generational trauma and how trauma can be passed down to the next generation.

i also listened to the audio on libby and the narrator did a phenomenal job

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partly inspired by Pachinko, Alice Evelyn Yang’s intricate debut is a sprawling, multigenerational saga foregrounding turbulent periods in China’s relatively-recent history. Yang opens in 2017 with Qianze, only child of Chinese immigrants, she’s in her mid-twenties, based in Manhattan she works for a top consultancy firm and spends her scant leisure time with college boyfriend Theo. But then the father who disappeared on her fourteenth birthday suddenly resurfaces. His incoherent state, compounded by his obvious dependence on alcohol, forces Qianze to take him in. The two are then trapped together in her tiny, one-bedroom apartment. Both Qianze and her Ba (father) are flailing. For Ba his past is all too present while Qianze feels adrift, cut off from her heritage, uncertain of her identity - she doesn’t understand why her tight-lipped parents never talked about China. Yet for years she’s been inexplicably haunted by mystical creatures stemming from Chinese mythology.

Ba and Qianze’s uneasy co-existence frames a series of flashbacks which jump around in time. Gradually a picture emerges of unresolved, intergenerational trauma; a family scarred by decades of suffering and violence. A portrait composed from scenes chronicling formative experiences of Ba aka Weihong and Ming his mother, tracking them both from child to adult. They too are dogged by unsettling omens, strange sightings of unearthly creatures trouble the boundary between reality and the fantastical. What links Weihong, Ming and Qianze is the monstrous: monsters within, monsters lurking all around. For Ming the monster traces back to Japan’s colonisation of rural, Manchuria where she grew up, later embodied by a Japanese officer who repeatedly rapes her. A man who describes himself as a kind of yōkai, manifestation of ancient evil. For Weihong the beast’s inside, first showing itself in his teens when, with former schoolmates, he joined Mao’s paramilitary Red Guard. Together they roamed their city’s streets terrorising “counter-revolutionaries,” their sadistic acts approaching realms of previously-unimagined cruelty. Now some version of this beast seems to be stalking Qianze.

The imagery’s frequently arresting and I found Yang’s writing style generally impressive. And I liked the incorporation of magical realism of the kind associated with writers like Márquez. It’s an ambitious piece, perhaps overly so, a broad sweep narrative that’s can be visceral, moving and absorbing but it’s also markedly uneven. The sections detailing Qianze’s precarious emotional state were stretched-out, repetitive. There were times when this was effective as a representation of the complexities of trauma, itself closely bound up with repetition. But the continual circling back, the obsessive recital of deep-seated emotional turmoil could also lessen the impact. Although the accounts of Qianze’s treatment at work, her exhausting, fifteen-hour days, suggested an attempt to temper the excesses of the China episodes by inserting a reminder of damage inflicted on individuals by the demands of capitalism. Not that it’s entirely successful set against the main characters’ lives.

Through Ming and Weihong, we witness misery heaped upon misery from colonialist atrocities to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution to the plight of comfort women. More intimate episodes are similarly gruelling ranging from depictions of sexual violence to agonising miscarriages, stillbirths, extreme poverty, opium addiction, domestic abuse of women and children. Parents are brutal and/or withholding and/or severe and/or manipulative: Weihong’s drunken father regularly batters him with a belt; Ming’s mother mistreats her for being a girl and because she never had to suffer the pain of foot-binding; Qianze is abandoned by Ba then left to hold everything together when her mother retreats from the world. It’s an exhaustive litany of anguish.

In the novel’s universe individuals are, more often than not, predator or prey – sometimes both. And, for me, the ending with its movement towards closure and reconciliation just can’t compete with the brutality of what’s gone before. I also found myself thinking about debates around the nature and purpose of so-called immigrant narratives. Are the perspectives on China and Chinese families presented here a necessary corrective to the era of the ‘good immigrant’ novel? Or might Yang’s book, albeit unintentionally, reinforce negative, demonising or patronising, stereotypes, feeding – like Jung Chang’s work - into broader anti-China narratives. I’m really not sure but, after reading this, these kinds of questions linger.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Dead Ink for an ARC

Rating: 2.5/3

[Zana · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

Wow! What a beautifully written novel! Graphic and gut-wrenching, Alice Evelyn Yang doesn't hold her punches. And I'm very glad for that.

Usually, historical fiction isn't my genre. But the author managed to capture my attention with her descriptions of humanity's brutality and resourcefulness.

I loved that this novel wasn't a simple case of bad guys vs. good guys. Instead, this novel explored how several generations of one family survived under repressive conditions with the scant resources that were available to them. Different family members utilized different methods of survival. Were they completely ethical or moral? How do you stay true to your beliefs if your life and your family's lives are at stake?

I don't read a lot of fiction or nonfiction about the Cultural Revolution, so this was very eye-opening for me. The historical events that were mentioned (specifically the Red Guards and their brutality) had me on Google and Wikipedia. I'll always stan novels that make me curious about specific parts of history or current events, so this was a huge reason why I really enjoyed this book.

Generational trauma manifested as a monstrous magical creature is one of my favorite niche tropes. So, if you're into that, definitely give this a read.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for this arc.

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book, blinked, and it was hours later and I’d read the whole thing

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

One’s family is not a brief tempest but a lifetime of mist. A constant fog, whose wet texture of hurt would always be there.

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a stunning, gorgeously written story that is as beautiful as it is difficult to read.

Please note these trigger warnings before picking this up: animal cruelty, sexual assault, and graphic violence.

The book shows the brutal legacy of China’s Cultural Revolution and its generational impact on a single family. This is what I like about reading historical fiction: the fact that I learned bits of history that I was unaware of. While I had a little knowledge about Mao and the Little Red Book, this book showed me the visceral details of those years. I ended up in deep research on whether the violence in the book actually happened in real life, and was troubled by my findings.

The story starts with Qianze and her childhood nightmare that began when her Ba suddenly showed up after eleven years. But the man who came back was not the same father she had dreamed of coming back. Ba was now older, disoriented, and haunted. Eventually, he begins to speak of his past.

Through his memories, the story leads to his days as a Red Guard, and further back to his mother’s harrowing struggles during the Japanese occupation.

The chapters detailing his mother's experiences are undoubtedly the most difficult part for me to read. Narrated in haunting prose, her experience is dark and disturbing, and it took me hours to recover from reading what she endured.

While the novel weaves historical fiction with elements of magical realism—featuring demons, fox spirits, and a terrifying jackalope—it is the historically accurate violence that truly haunted me.

Alice Evelyn Yang handles every element beautifully, balancing the fantastical with brutal historical truths. The result is graphic, atmospheric, and heartbreaking. If I had one minor complaint, it would be about the author’s note. While certainly not a requirement, I always appreciate it when authors share the historical inspiration behind their work, and unfortunately, I couldn't find any. Again, this is just an expectation that will not impact my review, but it would have been nice to have.

I originally picked this up as part of my goal to read the entire Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, and I honestly don’t see how the other nominees could surpass it. I’ll be diving into the next longlisted book soon, but this one will stay with me.

What an amazing debut! I'm surprised not a lot of people have read this yet.

[T Davidovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a masterpiece, though you might not realize it before you get past the first hundred pages.

Things start off slow and dull for the first few chapters as you follow Qianze and her father, Weihong, getting reacquainted after years of estrangement. Neither are easy to connect to as characters. At first, Qianze's mother ended up being the only person who really snagged my attention. (She goes from being an impoverished Chinese immigrant and a single mother pretending to be widowed to being a stereotypical middle class lady who attends yoga classes, forms book clubs, is curious about Buddhism, tries Mediterranean diets, and gossips about her daughter. I desperately wanted to know more about this flawed figure whose worry over her daughter's unhappiness causes her to think it might somehow be helpful to warn Qianze that being moody means she's going to reincarnate as a worm.)

It's not that Qianze and Weihong don't have depth of their own. They do, but they lack unique perspectives and voices. Their observations, interactions, reactions, and behaviors taught me less about who they are and more about how technically gifted the author is at setting tone and atmosphere. The writing is beautiful, but I wasn't emotionally invested, at least not at first. The one good thing about the early chapters is the way fantastical elements are used to explore how unsettling it is to care for an aging parent who has memory loss.

Fortunately, about a third of the way through, we get a new perspective character named Ming, and she brings everything together. She grows up in rural Manchuria during World War II, and in this setting, the author's enthralling prose gets a chance to shine. I was completely swept off my feet as the story's spellbinding imagery transported me to another time and place. Ming is also a compelling character with a propulsive (if very dark) story, so the plot and pacing pick up here.

Some of Weihong's behaviors also get an explanation around this time, making him a more layered character. His backstory is heartbreaking, and if I wasn't emotionally invested in him as an adult, I certainly got emotional when I learned more about his past. Qianze's story similarly gets going after a hundred pages. Her character grew on me as I got more glimpses into her rage, her fears, and the way she's tried to curate her image. It turns out that her father's return causes that image to shatter, dredging up all sorts of contradictory feelings, which somewhat justifies her painfully stunted reactions in the first few chapters. It would have been nice to have this context earlier. However, even though the recontextualizing comes late, it still helped me to forgive how slow the story is at the start.

By the time the book reaches its powerful and poignant climax, I had chills. As more mysteries are uncovered, the novel reveals itself to be a stunning and devastating depiction of the different relationships people have with each other, themselves, their history, and their homes. It's about the myths we tell ourselves and each other to survive and the things people are capable of doing when survival is on the line. It's about what gets preserved, repressed, distorted, altered, or lost through various collective and personal traumas. I highly recommend it to people who like multiple timelines, Chinese history, messy family sagas, books about immigration, and magical realism that leans towards horror.

~Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a Digital ARC. All opinions are my own.~

[Kobe · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars holy hell this is devastating

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv)]

i love debut novels!! sue me ok

[totesintobooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

God….this is a book that left me shaken to my core. Yang’s writing is lucid and controlled, yet devastating in effect. She paints the atrocities of war with unflinching clarity, refusing to sanitise brutality or soften violence, and in doing so forces the reader to confront how cruelty embeds itself in bodies, memories, and families.

The novel’s structure—moving between past and present—mirrors the nature of trauma itself. Ba’s search for Qianze and their eventual reunion is not just a narrative thread, but an emotional reckoning, one shaped by everything that came before. The past does not stay in the past; it bleeds into the present, shaping relationships, silences, and failures of love. Yang makes clear that trauma is not inherited as a story, but as behaviour, absence, and fear.

One of the most painful themes in the novel is the lasting damage caused by being denied parental love. Children grow up starved of safety and tenderness, and that deprivation echoes across generations. Evil, in this book, is not abstract—it is fear-driven, divisive, and contagious. It causes people to abandon one another in moments of survival, leaving behind scars that no reunion can fully erase.

Ming’s suffering is almost impossible to comprehend. Her experiences as a comfort woman haunt the novel, and I found myself unable to fully grasp the depth of pain she endured. Her turn to opium feels tragically understandable; waking up in a body so violated and altered by violence makes survival itself unbearable. Yang does not romanticise this suffering—she presents it as horrific, consuming, and permanently damaging.

This is a deeply disturbing book, and it is meant to be. It shows how war deforms not only nations, but families, love, and the capacity to care. It is a novel about separation—between parents and children, past and present, self and body—and about how those separations are inflicted by fear and sustained across generations.

Yang shows that harm does not only come from those who commit atrocities, but from those who survive by refusing to see, remember, or acknowledge them. Trauma deepens when it is denied: Ming, Weihong, and Qianze suffer not only because of what happened to them, but because no one names it, mourns it, or takes responsibility for it. Silence allows pain to fossilise.

Generational trauma depends on this silence. When the past is ignored, it resurfaces as neglect, rage, fear, and abandonment, passed down to children who inherit the damage without its history. The novel insists that moral clarity requires witness; to look away is to allow evil to remain diffuse, unaccountable, and ongoing.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5! ty to the publisher for the gifted copy

[quillnqueer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A harrowing, dark story of three generations of one family, as they grapple with the trauma carried on by the next generation, and try to heal.

This is not an easy story to read, it's extremely violent and emotionally raw, and I could feel the author had a personal connection to the story throughout. This is beautifully told though, and I connected so strong with all three of the characters.

Although the last section is the hardest to read, and I was worried it would end too abruptly, the author pulled it off - I thought the ending was beautiful. This is such an incredible debut that I will be (carefully) recommending to people.

[ohna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“He was born in the harvest season of her third year. Before his birth, there were scattered beginnings of memory: still-life scenes of the house and the fields, images that lacked substance. Her first real memory – the first one with teeth – was the night her brother was born.”

crying because i also dont remember a life before my brother.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is non-linear historical fiction covering three generations of a Chinese family. Qianze, estranged from her father for eleven years, finds him again in a diminished, possibly mentally unstable, state. Through his stories she learns the family's history, including his involvement in the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution and her grandmother's experiences under Japanese occupation. She starts experiencing visions of a fox-spirit and a jackalope.

It is structured in the form of a reunion, and each chapter indicates the number of days remaining until this reunion takes place. I particularly enjoyed the father-daughter dynamic. Their reconciliation is slow and unresolved enough to feel true. Unfortunately, the structure works against it, due to repetition, which, whether deliberate or not, loops back on the same emotional content.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I had not recently read Wild Swans, Jung Chang's memoir, which covers much of the same history in a more realistic fashion. Yang's fictional treatment feels reduced since it lacks the power of lived experience. I liked it enough to read another book by this author. It will appeal to patient readers of multigenerational family sagas with folkloric elements.

[Denise Ruttan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am starting my reading year off on a strong note because my first read of 2026 was a banger.

This is a slow-paced literary epic full of family secrets, abandonment, trauma and abuse, taking place over three generations of a Chinese family. Infused with a subtle touch of magic realism and Chinese folklore, this novel is brimming with dark weirdness just under the surface.

Qianze is 25, an accountant who hates her ruthless job and longs to paint. She is stalked by cryptic Chinese aunties and a fox spirit, and is haunted still by the trauma of her father abandoning the family when she turned 14. They told everyone he was dead, they were so ashamed of it. But one day her father stumbles back into her life, an alcoholic showing early signs of dementia who keeps muttering about a prophecy he must tell her, but he can never quite remember it. In the meantime she learns about her past as he tells her stories of their family, which her family always hid from her.

The timeline then jumps between points of view, between Qianze's father, growing up in the Cultural Revolution, and his mother, who survived as a comfort woman during the Japanese occupation. It really showed the brutality of trading out one dictator for another, and the fragile lives of the women who were abused and left behind. It was shattering to learn about the cruelty the comfort women faced under the Japanese and how they were then punished as traitors by the Communists. It also showed how hard it was for Chinese immigrants as the family moves to Virginia.

Through all this darkness, the story kept begging the question of how monstrous humans can become and still be merely human; that's why the magic realism wasn't in your face.

I loved the mix of magic realism and the slide between realities and timelines. The characters were also very real, complex and raw. No one was easy to like in this book but I found the characters endearing and I was rooting for them to break the cycle of abandonment and abuse.

This is another book that I cannot say I really enjoyed because it was so dark and emotionally exhausting, but I found the author's prose to be absolutely beautiful. For a debut this was incredible, and this author is one I'll be keeping an eye on.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Jifu · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this title courtesy of NetGalley)

Alice Evelyn Yang writes with an impressive efficiency - concise, yet always vivid. No matter which specific character was experiencing the plot, what tangle of emotions they were wrestling with, or what location or time the narrative had shifted to, everything always immediately became as alive and as real as anything - including the magical realist elements. Every time I picked up the book to carry on, it was an immediate and engrossing immersion into the thick of it all.

However, that of course meant being always at least neck-deep within the themes that tie through the story from start to finish - the horrors of colonization, war and the atrocities it brings in tow, and of course, trauma. Trauma upon trauma upon trauma, not just affecting the characters in horrendous moments, but trauma that then cycles on down through the next several generations. A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing didn’t just make me uncomfortable at times - it felt like it was trying to actively tear at my very heart as I watched the core characters endure an array of mental, emotional, and at times physical agonies. And it was their resulting anguish that mostly felt the most real of anything else - that, but also thankfully the little moments of joy and relief as well. This book was both soul-wrenching, yet beautiful, and no matter what had just happened in the narrative, it was never long until I came right back to read another chapter or several.

This is not only a fantastic debut for Yang, but I would definitely call this one of my most memorable fiction reads of 2025 so far. I definitely hope to see more titles from her in what I hope to be in the near future. In the meantime, I would love to see her first work gracing our popular reads shelf here at the library once it’s published.

[b. ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

is there any genre better than a decades long historical fiction family saga that explores intergenerational trauma, migration, survivor’s guilt, and colonization?

no. i do not think so

thank you to libro.fm for this alc!

[A Dreaming Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley, William Morrow (eARC) and HarperAudio Adult (ALC) for providing me with advanced copies.

This was a well written debut novel. I found it to be a good balance between the historical and the fantasy/mythology/folklore elements. Initially I found it a little difficult to keep track of the family tree and the timeline but it all came together midway through. The switch between the story telling and present day was done well. The way generational trauma creeps through when you're unaware, was executed well. There were a lot of dark elements in this story. I felt especially heartbroken knowing that these more or less happened in real life during the war. The ending was quite emotional and was a good payoff to the story. I would definitely recommend this to anyone into historical fantasy.

The narrator did a brilliant job with the book and emotions were expressed perfectly. It significantly improved my reading experience by helping me with the pronunciations especially. It would have been a bit more helpful if it was a two person narration with a guy narrating the flashback story being told by the dad.

[Ebony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking story of inter-generational trauma with multiple POVs and a pretty complex timeline. The author weaves together folklore and history in a way that allows you to easily slip between the past and present of this family while not losing the reader. This is an extremely heavy story but so beautifully written you flow through it. An amazing debut novel.

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to rate this five stars purely on making me cry at the ending it is really more of a four star affair

[John Caleb Grenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Stop me if you’ve heard this before” is a line that drops somewhere in chapter 4 of this book. And the temptation was there to do so. Because, well, I had. Heard this before.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75✨ This book was so painfully sad and beautifully written. A deeply visceral reading experience. The generational trauma is unmatched. I appreciated the magical realism in this story - I almost wished it leaned more heavily into the mysticism and Chinese folklore. I find this impressive for a debut novel and I think the audio performance was very well done. Thank you Libro fm for this ALC.

[Iffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 stars. Completely unforgettable. A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a multigenerational saga of how war trauma is passed down, even when you do everything to prevent it. A DARK story that takes place across time and seas, with layered and tangible characters, and is steeped in Chinese folklore and fantastical elements. Absolutely heartbreaking and visceral. Please check trigger warnings before reading.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Clunky and dissonant, the book version of a tonal whiplash.

I couldn’t get past the questionable word associations and weirdly tortured metaphors. It’s as if the author picked up clichéd imagery and, knowing it is a cliché, tried to dress it up by piling abstract, logically wobbly descriptors meant to sound poetic and intelligent and literary™, but had the opposite effect for me. I kept mentally stumbling over sentences and spotting conceptual mismatches, which made it the worst kind of reading experience!

[amie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Who could she have been had the possibilities not been stolen from her, amputated in the height of her adolescence?”

How do you cope when at 14 you have to join the Red Guard to keep your family safe? How do you handle it when you realise part of you likes the violence you inflict? And then, what do you do when your daughter turns the same age you were, when you realised what you were capable of? How do you keep her from becoming like you? …you leave.

And yet that daughter carries that pain anyway; carries the grief of mourning a parent who’s still alive. She carries a past she did not live, because that trauma shaped her parents - who shaped her.

But how much of the monster we are is inherited, and how much is our choice? Can we choose which part of us to act on? Who is Qianze when she can’t remember her mother tongue; doesn’t know where her parents grew up? What does she owe the man who abandoned her 11 years ago, who is both her father and not - at least, not the one she knew. Can you truly leave your identity and culture behind, and start over? Become someone else? Are you still yourself without your memories?



This was absolutely phenomenal, and I can’t believe it’s a debut. Wonderfully complex and introspective, but utterly devastating. Yang explores so much, does so much with this story, I couldn’t put it down. Please be prepared for some very dark themes/triggers, but I will say it’s not gratuitous in its detail.

[LX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you so much for the proof Dead Ink Books!!

This doesn't let up from the emotions within it as you get to experience 3 timelines & generations. Each one has a different yet similar haunting within it.

Gotta admit, reading over different timelines isn't of my fave things but I did find myself way more invested and actually enjoying my reading experience this time round.

Once you get settled in each generation, should I say, you get a sense of dread and just horrors of what those characters experience within their time. We have dementia and abandonment (also anythibg to do with father / daughter relationshijust gets to me a lot lately.) experiences of being a Red Guard and what he had to do, and reading about Ming and what she had to go through.

I will say, with the blurb I was expecting more magical realism horror within it but the true horror is the trauma each person experiences and how that is somewhat passed down in a sense of it changes and shapes us for what comes next.

[Eva Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Families be crazy.
Big swing but maybe my favourite book of the year

[mippers · Rating 5 out of 5]

devastating
usually not a fan of “multiple POVs” especially in an intergenerational way but was engrossed every step of the way
a “debut novel” (daring, imperfect) in the best way

[Anna Mikulec · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

RTC

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5* just really so good and sad and lovely and honestly traumatic and I cried for the last 70 pages but wow