They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss. ... it's impossible to comepte with the dead

A really pleasantly thematically complete thriller (got enough adverbs, there, pete?). It's really heavy without being overly opportunistic or like a tragedy buffet.

A multichild household is a pit of petty jealousies, this I knew, and the Nash children were panicking at the idea of competing not just with one another, but with a dead sister. They had my sympathies.

However, a 13yo ~100lb girl popping oxies, molly, and vodka and not blacking out (at the very least) adjacent to a protagonist who purportedly has a drinking problem, but doesn't dirnk to the point of drunknenness (is she just nursing a glass of bourbon Lahey style all day??) doesn't track.

In chapter 15 protagonist does literally everythign wrong in a way thats not consistent with how she would act based on everythign else we know about her. Maybe a trauma response, but since that's kind of touched on elsewhere in the book, I'm less keen on giving the author the benefit of the doubt here. This does, sadly, make her a trash protagonist, but the book overall is still really fun to read.

related