What a strange reading experience. While I found the content quite disturbing, that wasn't really the reason I didn't enjoy this as much as I hoped I would. Basically, I'm not quite sure what this book was trying to say. There weren't a lot of clear themes or strong takeaways, which is what I expected walking into it. Particularly because I think it's clear the author wanted it to, in some way, mirror The Catcher in the Rye (clock the cover comparison).

Now if I were going to evaluate the story alone without any deeper consideration of theme or motif, it was fairly weak. While the writing was beautiful and the story was structured in an interesting way, character dialogue and relationships were clunky and confusing which really impacted the narrative flow. I found some of the subplots to be underdeveloped and not well integrated to the larger plot and I questioned why they were included at all.

The saving grace of this book, in my opinion (which almost bumped it up an entire star) was the ending; literally the last chapter. It provides context that gives insight into the two main characters' motivations in a very interesting way. It explains a lot of the internal conflict of the main character and was a wonderful way to tie it all up. I only wish that I had liked it more up to that point.