I rated this book 5 stars when I first read it about a year ago, but now when I came back here to check if the author had a new book published, I noticed that there are no reviews so I decided to write one. The first thing I want to praise about this book is how accurately it describes loneliness, love, loss and dealing with grief. I didn't expect to get emotionally invested in the story since the writing comes off as pretentious at first.. but I was wrong, it had me tearing up a few times even though the book is pretty short. The author knows how to create realistic characters each with flaws and struggles of their own. Their backstories were handled really well too. There are confusing storylines and characters that don't appear again after showing up once, but I honestly didn't mind any of that. It works really well with the writing style of the author. I actually really liked the confusing storylines, because I like how ambiguous they were and can have different meanings depending on the reader's interpretation. Especially that one scene with the 'twin?' situation that I won't spoil here, but that was one of my favorite parts of this book. I remember thinking the book should've been written in 3rd person since all the characters sounded similar in 1st person POV, but now that I think about it maybe this kind of story wouldn't have been that effective if it was narrated in 3rd person because it would've caused a disconnect between the reader and characters. And there's a female character we get introduced to towards the end whom I wish we as the readers could've been led to judge at first so that when we finally get her POV we'd regret judging her without knowing her story and how everything is like from her perspective. I feel like it would've been more powerful that way. But other than that I really love everything about this book including the somewhat bittersweet ending, and will be buying the author's future works as well if there are any.
I wrote this on November 23, 2020, during COVID, and Esubalew shared it on his Facebook page just as it is below. Five years later, I’ve changed a lot, but I’m happy to share it as it was.