I love epistolary. Whether it's a story told through a character's journal entries like Michelle Paver's [b:Dark Matter|8350864|Dark Matter|Michelle Paver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1504563569l/8350864.SY75.jpg|13203928] or the blog posts of Ted's Caving Page (honestly a must read for any horror fan), I am all about getting into a character's head by what they choose to write. It's one step removed from first-person narration, but manages to highlight the values of that character because they're not going to jot down every passing thought. Instead we only get the important bits, or what that character considers to be important which is just as telling.

With that caveat, I was probably always going to like this book. (That, and I'm a sucker for really long book titles.) The titular story used to be sold as a standalone book that I was never able to get my hands on, but has since been reissued as this version with two unrelated short stories at the end. This was a pretty polarizing story that had a lot of buzz around it, and I honestly went into it a little apprehensive because of how many reviews I saw mentioning how dark and disturbing they found it. Now that I'm on the other side myself, I think this is a case of a horror book getting too popular for its own good and getting dinged by people who don't usually give the genre a chance.

Yes there's animal abuse. Yes there's body mutilation. Yes there's unsettling situations I would never ever in a million years want to experience for myself. But I've already seen that in other books before and seen way worse.

In an attempt to stop being so vague while also trying not to spoil anything, at root is a very intense dom-sub relationship between two queer women who have only ever interacted through emails and instant messaging. Boundaries are pushed and both sides ultimately go too far, with disturbing results. If anything it left me more bummed out than rattled because it 1) seemed way too plausible as something that could actually happen and 2) reminded me a lot of a real-world situation that happened in 2018 in the gay community I won't go into, but others might remember the "Noodles and Beef" incident.

Similarly, the two short stories at the end of this particular printing also left me feeling more gloomy than spooked. All three stories had themes of people yearning for connections (and I was happy to see the author's afterword pointing that out), and how far people would go to put themselves into danger just to be noticed by someone else, let alone be loved. It's easy to sit back and scoff at what these people were doing, but at low points of my own life (or maybe even lower points yet to come), whose to say I wouldn't be as desperate? That's kind of horrifying in its own way.

Not exactly the kind of horror book that gave me the goosebumps I was looking for, but it was certainly unlike anything else I'd ever read, and it did leave me feeling something after finishing it. Definitely can't say that about every read.