Time's Mouth

by Edan Lepucki

From New York Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki comes an enthralling saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, dangerous landscape of California

Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950’s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. Yet Ursa’s powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her son, Ray, and his pregnant lover, Cherry, to flee their home for Los Angeles and reinvent themselves far from Ursa’s insidious influence. But escaping their past won’t be so easy. A series of mysterious events forces Cherry to abandon their baby, leaving Ray to raise Opal alone.

Now a teenager and still heartbroken over the abandonment of the mother she never knew, Opal must journey into her own past to reveal the generations of secrets that gave rise to the shimmering source of her family's painful legacy.

From the forests of Santa Cruz, to the 1980s glam of Melrose Avenue to a solitary mansion among the oil derricks off La Cienega Boulevard, and brimming with the double-edged capacity of memory to both heal and harm, Time’s Mouth is a poignant and evocative excavation of the bonds that bind families together.

Genres: Fiction, Time Travel, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Audiobook

416 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2023

About the author

Edan Lepucki is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17. Her new novel, Time's Mouth, was published August 1, 2023.

Edan is also the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire, The Cut, McSweeney's, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She was the guest editor of Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019.

She likes taking baths, reading, and filling out forms.

Reviews

[Edan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book!

[Patrick Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up front: I, uh, know this author. Real, real well. So there’s no claim to impartiality here. Lots of other good reviews to choose from if that’s what you’re looking for.

I have read this book, or portions of it, many times. I have seen it evolve into what it is now. But when it finally came out, I sat down and read it again, beginning to end, in hardcover. And I have to say, it absolutely slaps. I think this is Lepucki’s best plotted book and features, at its heart, three of my favorite characters of recent fiction.

In addition to pulling off the magic trick of being about literal time travel without succumbing to nostalgia, this book captures so much of the pleasure and pain of parenthood (and how the pleasure of parenting turns into a kind of pain as time passes).

There are a lot of strands here for people who liked California (mainly setting but also the closeness of a young couple against the world) and Woman No. 17 (LA teen culture weirdness, complicated motherhood, etc) but this book, in my opinion, moves faster than either of those and comes together in a tremendously satisfying way.

I like fiction to be specific— to describe a place and a moment in time that only the author can deliver. Time’s Mouth delivers on that, rendering San Francisco in the 50s, Santa Cruz in the 60s, LA in the 80s and 90s (including the stretch of LaCienega near Slauson that throws every new transplant — “what is an oil field doing in LA?”). This is Edan’s LA, you can just tell, and it’s so fun to be in.

And I must say, the author has an ass that won’t quit.

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Sharon is a child she discovers that she has a gift, she can travel back in time and revisit events in her life. She leaves home, becomes known as Ursa and attracts a group of female followers to her cult. The book follows Ursa, her son Ray who marries Cherry, a cult member, and their daughter Opal.

As gifts go, I did not find this one to be particularly believable or useful, so that was just one of the things that I did not like about this book. The book was very long and slow. I contemplated stopping many times, but I was not rewarded for my decision to stick with it. The book was full of cult-think, strained (and strange) mother/child relationships and trendy psychiatric practices. This wasn’t for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Margo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am loving this fucking book!

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A family saga about women that can travel through time in their own memories. The women? Lost and messy. The California landscape? At once inviting and terrifying. The cult? Powerful and alienating.

I am a diehard Edan Lepucki fan, and I am delighted to say that tonally, this book is a happy marriage between California and Woman No. 17. Lepucki never shies away from the complicated parts of womanhood, and Time's Mouth is no exception.

[Gigi Ropp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got absolutely lost in this fantastic story and was devastated when it ended. I could’ve spent another couple hundred pages learning more and more about Ursa and Cherry and Opal. Truly magnificent!

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Happy Pub Day 🥳 August 1 2023

𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘨💜
http://donasbooks.blogspot.com/2023/0...

Thank you to the author, publishers, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of Time's Mouth. All opinions are mine.

The audiobook was a little hard to follow, but the narrator gave a good reading. I think I'll read this one again, with my eyes this time!

Creative, original time travel device, women trying to surmount the weight of intergenerational trauma, great coming of age story, this one's a keeper!

Rating: 🕒🕞🕓🕕 / 5 time travel devices
Recommend? Definitely!
Finished: July 23 2023
Format: Advance Digital Copy, NetGalley
Read this if you like:
🌠 Time travel
🙋‍♀️ Coming of age
🤰🏾 Stories about mothers
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Stories about intergenerational trauma

[b. ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

thank you to libro.fm for providing me an alc of this book!

time’s mouth is an interesting exploration of memory, motherhood, and intergenerational trauma all set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing los angeles

while i was initially drawn in by the characters, i found the story to be surprisingly slow-paced and kept losing interest while reading

a pivotal scene would pull me back in, only for it to end abruptly and leave me wanting (but not in a “less is more!” positive way)

the most interesting setting and plot point for me was the “cult” that ursa created at her isolated home in santa cruz, and i wish we had spent more time in that world and exploring the relationships between all the women who wound up there

overall, i do think time’s mouth was a worthwhile read, but the synopsis just promised something slightly More than what i ultimately think i got

[Tyler Hancsak · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF’d at 27%.
While this story was interesting at the start, it started to develop a much slower pace as the book continued. I had a hard time wanting to read this and took a break to read another book. After picking it back up again, I felt as if I had no real desire to know what was happening. There were many “unspoken” moments about the cult, so the reader was truly left in the dark. If things eventually become clearer the more you read, then I am truly at fault for not continuing. However, none of the characters were interesting enough for me and there wasn’t anything really pulling me in to continue it.

The writing was perplexing. There were many things that were over explained and many that were under explained, which made the pacing hard to follow.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’ve been on the hunt for a great novel about cults, or if time travel is your thing - you need Time’s Mouth in your life. Recommended to me by my fave sales rep, this novel was my life for 3 days. It’s long - which was only bothersome in the middle - but so good.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note to my friends, followers, and anyone else who finds me here: I am way behind on reviews of the books I have read in 2023. I want to get them all at least mentioned by the end of the year. So I am going into very short, hopefully pithy remarks. Thanks.

I loved every page of this novel. It has plenty of my favorite things: time travel, cults, sad children, weirdness of all kinds, and California. It spirals and surges and entertains and frightens and somehow comes to a very fine ending.

If you like/love any of the above, I urge you to give this book a try. If you don’t like/hate any of the above I suggest you give it a pass.

I hope Edan Lepucki writes a lot more novels and I will read all of them.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ARC from the publisher for my free, unbiased review of the book. This novel is available August 2023.

Keywords: time travel, parenthood, trauma, generational trauma, California

It's rare that I give a novel an unfettered five-star review. To do so means (to me) that the book was truly exceptional, standing out among the thousands of books I've read in a half century of life. The book has to have lucid prose, realistic dialogue, an original driver, and thematic investments that the author has woven throughout, among other attributes. Moreover, the book has to make me finish with a "Wow," some silence, and then I want to read it again or tell everyone about it. Better still: I will already be thinking about how I can teach the book.

Edan Lepucki's Time's Mouth deserves every one of its five stars. It accomplishes all of the qualifications for that rating and more. It's fair to say that writing an original time travel novel is a hard ask. Lepucki knows this, if her cameo for Octavia Butler is any indication. While Butler's Kindred thinks about historical trauma, generational trauma, and race, Lepucki leans into generational trauma in ways relevant to gender.

"Motherhood and loss, loss and motherhood---they went hand in hand. Your child isn't who they were the day before, they are slipping through your fingers, they can walk, and now they can drive, and, if you're lucky, they survive, they grow up and move on from you. Ursa realized with a sudden, seizing flash that by transporting she'd rejected the central sacrifice of parenthood. She never let him leave her."

Man, this quote got me in the motherhood feels hard. I've often talked with friends about how motherhood involves a constant mourning of your child as they were, even as you (hopefully) celebrate who they become. I cannot recall a book that gets that truth the way Lepucki's does. What's more, she binds that loss up in a sticky web of generational trauma that swallows members of an entire family.

*****SPOILERS AHEAD; STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW TOO MUCH*****

I find myself hard-pressed to say who the protagonist of the novel is, and I suspect that's by design. At the outset, we learn about Ursa (neé Sharon), who hints several times at sexual abuse from a monstrous father by the age of ten. Having left home, she finds her way to San Francisco, but not before she has her first experience of time travel, or what she calls "transporting." She has an experience where she slips from her own moment into a past one: more than a memory, then-Sharon can feels, smell, taste, hear, see everything happening to her prior self in the moment, observing her prior self from a corner of a room like, we will later find, a poltergeist. When Sharon first transports, she is starting her period, and Lepucki makes of menstruation a kind of cosmic font through which Ursa (and later her granddaughter Opal) can focalize back in time.

When then-Sharon arrives in San Francisco and becomes Ursa, we find that rather than healing from her childhood trauma, she has learned to make use of others: sexually, emotionally, financially. She literally starts a cult of "Mamas" on a friend's remote property outside of Santa Cruz, where women raise fatherless children (no judgment from me about the fatherless part, but definitely judgment about the children being locked up, neglected, and traumatized in other ways), farm the land (ultimately starting a lucrative marijuana operation), and essentially serve as acolytes to Ursa. On a monthly basis (of course at the full moon), they gather in a hexagonal geodesic dome with an oculus to feed off of the energy Ursa's transportations generate. (Here a cameo nod to Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale when the Mama's invoke the phrase "May the moon open.") Later, this secondary energy is called orgasmic and can still be rubbed off in its tertiary form as hugs. So the Mamas stay, abandoning themselves to Ursa's service, and abandoning their children on site essentially. The children are literally locked in "the purple room" during Ursa's transports in something that might evoke Flowers in the Attic for you other Gen X babies out there.

In the midst of this space, Ursa gives birth to her son Ray, who is raised around the other Mamas likewise catch-off children, one of whom is Cherry. Cherry was born to Ruth and Charlie. Charlie used to be one of Ursa's lovers. Ursa is jealous when they show up. Then Charlie leaves, and we find out near the end of the book that Ursa talks Ruth into abandoning Cherry with her (sort of). Ursa essentially kidnaps Cherry, who she doesn't even want. All of this happens by the first quarter of the book!

Ray and Cherry, now teenagers, begin a love affair and run off together when Cherry announces she's pregnant. They move to LA where they hide from Ursa and the Mamas, trying to be "normal" and happy for a while. When Opal is born, they're both in love with her, until the baby begins to have "episodes" that is. Of course the episodes are Opal also transporting like her grandmother (again, sort of). Later in life, when Opal insists Ray take her to meet her grandmother, Opal learns during a shared transport that Ursa was effectively haunting Cherry and possessing baby Opal, all to punish Ray and Cherry. Super f***ed up generational trauma stuff, for sure.

Before that, though, we get to "watch" Opal grow up. She becomes a cool kid, and then, like Ursa, begins to also "transport" around the time menstruation begins. Opal calls it "tunneling," but it's the same experience. At the same time, Ray has begun therapy with a Reichian psychologist, who has him scream into pillows, talk into his breath, and gag himself into mindfulness and awareness. His psychologist also tells him about Reich's Orgone Stimulator, a wood box lined with organic and inorganic materials in which one sits and hopes to channel energy. Ray's desperate for anything to help him process and heal from his childhood off-the-grid with the Mamas, so he buys one. When he tells Opal, she initially thinks he's nuts, until she tells him that she can time travel.

Soon enough, Opal and Ray have developed their own set of Ursa-like rules about when, where, and how Opal can time travel in the Orgone Simulator. At one point, the narrator says, "A year into being on her own, [Opal] realized how much Ray was like the mamas; wanting to keep her small and quiet, keep her inside the house." Yes, exactly. Even as Ray is trying to do better than what was one for him, he winds up revisiting some forms of trauma onto Opal. When Opal tunnels back to a moment when Ray was on the phone with Ursa, and Opal hears him say "Sharon," she confronts him.

What follows is nothing less than a tour-de-force of tying up the warp and weft of Opal's and Ursa's mutual and separate strands of time travel. In the process, Opal learned "about what Ursa had done" and she decides she "would tell [Cherry] what had happened with Ruth, why this cycle of mothers leaving their daughters was repeated." And so out of the generations of trauma, revisited on children and children's children, comes a daughter and a mother who realize the only thing that matters is their time together in the right now, that they cannot get back the past, and in many ways would not want to.

**************************************
In addition to this careful, cleverly wrought narrative, Lepucki brings considerable strengths in prose. I found the book lovely to read, with its homages to different spaces in California, to nature, and the characters' meditations on their choices and situations. I stopped feeling like I was reading a novel at many points, and perhaps that's ultimately the magic of this book. It literally pulled me out of time.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up

Gosh this was a slog. I don’t think I’ve ever read a time travel book that I didn’t enjoy until now. This is probably because it’s missing all the bits about time travel that usually make it so engaging.

In Time’s Mouth Sharon realizes as a teen she can travel back to her past selves and relieve memories for a time until they become degraded. However, once there she pretty much just watches like a ghost. Over time she gets better and better and can slip back more easily and takes up a place at her rich friend’s manse directing a cult for women where they watch her fall into these trances, it becomes euphoric for everyone around her. From there, she takes in women and their children only to work and live on her compound. Neglecting all of the kids except for her own son. As the novel goes on we transition to her son Ray, his partner Cherry (also raised on the compound) and their child Opal as they escape the place and make a life in LA. But there are some inheritances you can’t run from and mysteries born from trauma that need solving.

A generational story about child abandonment, breaking cycles of neglect and abuse and the tethers of family that can be so hard to escape.

I’ve seen great reviews for this book so it could very well be a me problem—when you say time travel I have specific expectations—but beyond this, I listened to the 17+ hour audiobook and maybe that also did it a disservice. The narration was slow and a bit monotone. I enjoyed the first half of the book ok but never felt connected to or invested in any of the characters. This book was too long with far too much filler. I did not need to experience Ray’s therapy sessions or learn all about the machine he puts in his garage. Honestly, I was just bored and had to speed this up as fast I could just to finish it. But other people (that I trust!) really loved it so if you’re interested, see for yourself. But I’d avoid the audiobook.

Thanks to @netgalley and the publisher for the review copy.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Closer to 4 1/2 stars. Full disclosure. I’m friends with the author. I am also objective.

This is her third novel, and definitely her best. This is not a knock on the other two, it’s just that this one is that good. Right from the start, I was completely captivated by her prose. With a high concept premise such as this, this novel could’ve easily gone wrong in so many ways, and it went right in almost every way. I thought she was very smart with the way she unfolded the plot, and it took interesting turns at precisely the moments I was starting to wonder where things were going. My only real ding on it is that I do think it’s a little bit long. As much as part of me wanted to keep reading about these characters for another hundred pages, I started to get a little bit weary near the end.

Beautiful writing, unique and riveting concept aside, a big reason for that extra half star is because a good chunk of this novel takes place in the 80s in Los Angeles, in and around the area where I grew up, there was such a sweet hit of nostalgia throughout. She would talk about stores that I'd forgotten about, street names, and the general feeling of what it was like to grow up in 80s Los Angeles. Sometimes the specificity of her descriptions took my breath away. I will be thinking about this one a while.

[The Starry Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time's Mouth is a story about mothers, memories, and what we inherit and what we choose to keep, set in the hyper new age world of California featuring time travel, life force energy, vortices, and psychoanalysis. The writing had a creepy quality to it that helped to invoke the hazy whimsy of California. The cultish aspects of the story coupled with the time traveling plot made this a beguiling read that was hard to put down. The story was original and explored inter-generational trauma that continues to live on in the characters as they try to find the missing pieces of their lives. Are secrets just forgotten memories? Is it better to forget or to remember? There's a sinister tension that is present throughout the entire story that makes this an unusual and atmospheric read. A very unique story that asks the question "if you could travel back into your past, would you?

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a free arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Kam · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing adventure! Read it for yourself!! The settings in California are beautiful. The characters jump off the pages.

[Lisa Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook and while the narration was good I found the story challenging to get into. It just didn't hold my attention and I found myself disinterested in the characters. The time travel aspect was intriguing and the cover is beautiful.

I received a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Kenshata Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit. I. Was. Not. Ready.
Don’t come to this book not ready to face your shit.
If you read this book and somehow don’t get something you can use from it then.. I don’t know.
Just read this. But be ready to do the work. Life ain’t no crystal stair, even when your stairs are literally crystal.

[Stacy40pages · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki. Thanks to @counterpointpress for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ursa has found out she can time travel through her memories. When she flees her hometown in 1950, she draws a group of women into her orbit and they become like a cult.

I am very glad that I picked this one up, despite my intimidation with the size and genre. Some sci-fi type stories are hard for me to get into but this one was very easy to understand and I was instantly hooked. At heart it’s a story about mothers and daughters and the trauma that we pass down. The time travel was just an added bonus to the story. It is pretty sizable but such an entertaining and easy read the pages fly by.

“Motherhood and loss, loss and motherhood - they went hand in hand. Your child isn’t who they were the day before, they are slipping through your fingers, they can walk and now they can drive, and, if you’re lucky, they survive, they grow up and move on from you.”

Time’s Mouth comes out 8/1.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange one because, while I really enjoyed the writing and the time travel element, there's a point where it suddenly... changes. Ursa is the main character for a big chunk of the book, it follows her and focuses on creating the house/community and all that, and then it just switches to something else. And when it swings back, it's like Ursa has been demoted to a side character. Part of me understands why the story had to be told that way, another part really didn't like the way it felt like being thrown from one story to another.

That said I overall enjoyed the book. 3.5 rounded up.

[Selen | talesbysel · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 filler stars 🌟

Themes: motherhood, cult, paranormal, mental health

This book is missing my favorite element from the time travel - the interaction, the ability to impact the outcome of things. There are many fillers in the story with no real outcome, it just makes the book unnecessarily long. On top, none of the characters are likable, they are all making stupid choices along the way. The only part I liked was the twist at the end of chapter 19, hats off to Opal for thinking on her feet (or mind)

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is so much going on in this novel that I don’t even know how to describe it. It takes place over 50 or so years from the perspectives of multiple characters - Ursa, her son Ray, Cherry, and their daughter Opal. It’s about a weird sort of time travel that’s not so much travel as being able to revisit past memories and that has strange effects on the world around the traveler as they do so. It’s about a cult. It’s about families and recreating/breaking cycles of abandonment. And more!

Reading this book really was a roller coaster of reactions for me. At times I found it interesting, at times I found it boring. Indeed, for a stretch I found it so weird and slow that I started reading other books while in the middle of it. At times I was just confused about what the point of the book even it was and why we were being told certain parts of it. Indeed, if I was a DNF person I probably would have DNFed it. And yet, I’m so glad I stuck with it! It all really came together towards the end and I even cried when I finished it. I do think it could have been shorter though.

I’d say fans of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr or authors like Emily St. John Mandel might like it, people who don’t mind a slower slightly weird book with a lot of different strands.

3.5 stars

[The One Where Aimee Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time’s Mouth is a story of mothers and daughters, of time (the past and how it affects the present), of intergenerational trauma and loss.

Edan Lepucki’s poignant prose is quietly haunting. Check out this stunningly powerful quote for yourself to get a sense for the book:

“Motherhood and loss, loss and motherhood-they went hand in hand. Your child isn’t who they were the day before, they are slipping through your fingers, they can walk, and now they can drive, and if you’re lucky, they survive, they grow up and move on from you.”

Oof, that seriously hits.

This book is perfect for readers who love family sagas and I think the use of time travel and the plot with the cult make it a truly unique one. I listened to the audiobook and the narration is great.

I prefer a more quickly paced book and heavier SciFi/paranormal themes. But if a family saga is your jam I can totally see this being a five star read for you.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Thank you to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC. Time’s Mouth will be out 8/1!

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks #netgalley for this book. I had such a hard time with this story. I had the audiobook and tried listening to it on high speed because it was dragging. The first part set with the Mamas was somewhat interesting but when the young kids become a couple and move, I was bored. Not for me

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent release from Edan Lepucki. I loved her writing and insights and the way she captured California. There are also cults and time travel, which were cool, but not the focus of my adoration.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this book had a lot of promise, it just didn’t deliver for me. I was hoping for more of a “cult focused” story, however it veered off into a family drama direction. The spiritual “life energy” curve completely lost me.

Despite this book not resonating for me, it was an interesting take on 1970 and 80’s California. I enjoyed the settings and era and could envision the characters’ lives. I also found the plot intriguing. It kept me wanting to know where it was going but just never delivered a clear direction. I felt lost and uninterested in the characters.

I think this is a book that readers will either love or hate but I can see how others might enjoy it more than I did. Readers looking for a character driven literary fiction involving dysfunctional families that are okay with a slow paced, meandering writing style may want to give this one a try. I just never was able to connect.

I received an audiobook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Rebecca Eisenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely, thoughtful, surprising book. To me, Time's Mouth had all of the hallmarks of a fantastic reading experience (in reverse-chronological order): a satisfying ending, yet I still did not want it to end; tears that begin as I near the conclusion in part because soon the book will be over; and characters acting with intelligence and integrity throughout.

Time travel is an extremely hard thing to do correctly due to, among other reasons, the time travel paradox. Time's Mouth does time travel as well as any time travel book I ever read (and I have read A LOT of time travel books!).

At the end of the day, this is less a book about time travel, and more a book about how trauma takes hold of multiple familial generations, yet the time travel aspect plays an important and unusual role.

What a fantastic book. I highly recommend.

[Jady Babin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How simple and beautiful, to follow time’s lead, to dance to it.”

What do you get when you combine magical realism, disturbing family patterns, time travel and a cult?
Answer - ‘Time’s Mouth’, by Edan Lepucki

This story hits from every angle. It is engaging, heartbreaking, and exasperating with a touch of wack-a-doodle.

Set in California, starting in the 1950s, a young, broken woman runs off on her own and a cycle of familial trauma is set in motion.

Not my normal type of book, but I was hooked in from the start.

*******************************

[Paige Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love freaks and books about freaks. this book has cult freaks, astral projection time travel freaks, freudo-marxian psychoanalysis freaks, father freaks and daughter freaks, sex freaks, freaks with abandonment issues, and garden variety californian freaks. i loved it. the audiobook was a joy to listen to, too

edit: the more i think about this, the more i think it is a really subtle & nuanced exploration of the effects of sexual abuse. maybe i’m reading too much into it but — !!

[Emily Perkovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure—I heavily disliked this ending & epilogue. But I loved the rest of the book so much. Even the characters who I did not like, I felt invested in which to me is an enormous feat. Loved the added surrealism created by the more poetic prose portions.

Thank you to Counterpoint and NetGalley for the ARC