lexy’s Reviews > The Staircase in the Woods > Status Update

“brainrot” has been written. more insanely lazy and tone deaf political imagery. instagram reel ass writing.

“ Owen laughed. “She’s not real. They’re not real. The—the people, they’re…” NPCs. Non-player characters. Just bits of program written into the story, unplayable, interactive only to a point. If we’re the player characters, they’re the non-players. Like fragments of artificial intelligence. “

give me a fucking break

The trauma in this book is so heavy handed and unrealistic to the point that I don’t really feel sympathetic because it’s so overly forced. Adults telling children they were mistakes, they hate them, they don’t care about them, other kids are smarter, they’re a waste of space. It’s just like at 150% and it completely takes me out of it.

internet brain writing style quotes that have bugged me so bad:
“a teen girl who unalived herself”
“He felt a twitter of validation. Senpai noticed me, he thought foolishly.”
“Time to cook, she thought in her best Walter White voice.”
one of the characters is from pgh & the author spells yinz like “yins”
a chapter called “New Room, Who This”
insane overuse of the word “vibes”

i cannot put this book down but there’s also so much i dislike about the writing style. internet-brained writing.