Scan barcode
c_alexander's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
loved this - loved the complex characters and relationships, the imagery, tone, and the pacing!
was disappointed side characters weren't further developed - especially in terms of the bipoc characters; racism is a theme explored in the book but in a really brief capacity considering its relevance
took a little while to 'pick up' but had me hooked in the second half
was disappointed side characters weren't further developed - especially in terms of the bipoc characters; racism is a theme explored in the book but in a really brief capacity considering its relevance
took a little while to 'pick up' but had me hooked in the second half
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Animal death, Alcohol, Cursing, Grief, Medical content, Mental illness, Blood, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Suicide, Death, Drug use, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Suicidal thoughts, Child abuse, Religious bigotry, Slavery, Violence, Homophobia, Racism, and Vomit
Minor: Child death, Death of parent, and Car accident
introverted_reads's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
babe wake up and smell the petrol.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Death, Blood, Body horror, Gore, Murder, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Drug use, and Alcohol
Moderate: Vomit, Physical abuse, Racism, Terminal illness, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Homophobia, Death of parent, Cancer, Car accident, and Sexual content
Minor: Religious bigotry and Fire/Fire injury
fuchs_galaxis's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Oh my God this book is so good. I devoured the audiobook in about a day.
Different ways to describe it:
Different ways to describe it:
- Dukes of Hazzard but gay and haunted
- Someone read The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater and went "this could be gayer and scarier"
It's spooky and visceral and filled with unrequited longing, gay panic (the queer kind not the murder kind), and fast cars. So fucking good.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Drug use
Moderate: Alcohol, Self harm, and Murder
Minor: Child abuse and Vomit
gabertron's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicide, Grief, and Gore
Moderate: Murder, Violence, Homophobia, Drug use, Racism, and Alcohol
Minor: Cancer, Fire/Fire injury, and Child abuse
nickoliver's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It took me quite a while to finish this book. I think I was a little bit in a reading slump that exacerbated the slowness with which I read it. But for the most part, it was due to the slow pace and the writing, which was a bit challenging for me as a non-English native speaker sometimes.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first. Especially the first half talked around a lot - the scenes kept repeating, the supernatural was confusing, the plot stagnated, the characters infuriated a bit. It was hard to convince myself to pick up the story again, knowing the main character would slog through life and not really acknowledge the problematic nature of others (mainly Sam for a very long time). And for a while, all that was happening was Sam pressuring Andrew to come out with him, a lot of alcohol and drugs, and car races. However, I have read a review (this one by Chai) where they talked about how this was kind of justified, since it emphasised Andrew's aimlessness and his grief. He’d just lost the most important person in his life and was utterly lost; how was he supposed to care about anything but finding out properly what happened? But still, it didn’t make for an enthusiastic reader.
Thankfully, after a while, things started to come together. While it was fairly predictable where the mystery surrounding Eddie’s death was concerned - the villain was easy to clock as the villain quite early on, to the point where I almost convinced myself it couldn’t be them because that was way too obvious and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to even expect a plot twist-, amusingly enough, I was way more invested and cared for the characters a lot more and suddenly had little trouble turning the pages (for a while at the beginning of the week, I literally read about twenty pages a day; later, that was tripled).
Like I mentioned above, the supernatural elements were a bit confusing. I understood the majority of it, but a lot of the time, I didn’t understand them while they were happening. And some parts I still don’t. It’s like I understood the overall theme of it, but if you asked me details about what exactly happened when Andrew was dealing with the revenant and being shown memories and waking up in deer carcasses or with slit wrists, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. That was a bit frustrating at times, since it was a pretty big part of the story.
My favourite thing about the book was the way Andrew grappled with his sexuality. At the beginning of the book, he wasn’t aware that he liked men and that he'd been in love with Eddie. Or rather, he seemed to have suppressed it so hard he wasn’t even aware that’s what he did. But when he went to Nashville to try and find out what happened to Eddie, it turned out that everyone thought he and Eddie had been a couple, and in all the six months he’d been there alone, Eddie’d never bothered to correct anyone. And that opened the dam inside of him - once he was made aware of it, it spilled out of him and he couldn’t put it back.
It was just written about so well! So much about his past explained why he and Eddie never went there, why it went unacknowledged. There was also a character named Del who added an interesting insight into their relationship. She was Andrew’s ex-girlfriend but had also been with Eddie at the same time as well. At one point in the book, she confronted Andrew about it and basically told him that they’d used her as a way to be with each other without having to be upfront about it, and that she thought if Eddie hadn’t died, they would’ve figured it out eventually. Hearing the way she and others talked about them was absolutely painful . It was a case of what-ifs, a whole lot of impossibilities. Andrew’s grief about losing Eddie and simultaneously realising what he’s lost along with him was raw and articulated so devastatingly, it made my insides clench with heartache.
I also appreciated that Eddie wasn’t painted as this perfect boy who would’ve made Andrew happy for the rest of his life if they’d gotten together. There were a lot of things said about him that made me side-eye him a little, which I didn’t like at first, but then I realised I kind of did? He wasn’t the perfect victim that was written about in a almost otherworldly way. I do think they would’ve been together for probably eternity, just because their connection dated so far back, but it wouldn’t have been a picture perfect relationship. I do sometimes feel like I wanted a little bit more of Eddie - maybe some flashbacks that would’ve shown me more of their dynamic, since that was the part that caught me off-guard a little sometimes -, but it didn’t bother me all too much.
There was a little romance between Andrew and another male character, which I really wasn’t on-board at first; this other character had a lot of (implied and shown) racist and homophobic friends, which was something that was never really addressed once the romantic interest was explicitly there. But surprisingly, I did warm up to him. I also liked the way their relationship was built up, because it wasn’t all too obvious from the start that he was going to be a romantic prospect? At least not obvious to me, because he wasn’t really on my radar for that. In any way, he was mostly just a means to an end at first and read as just really bad news, and while the start of their romance was a bit sudden, it didn’t completely come out of the blue. It was just a lot more subtly built up than in other books.
The side characters were fascinating and fleshed-out. There was Riley, Sam’s cousin and Andrew’s roommate, who helped with the latter’s quest for answers and had himself a penchant for the supernatural. He was also trans, and I honestly loved the way Mandelo wrote about that. It was just things like a noticing of top surgery scars, hints that Riley used to have a different name, that he'd shown up on Sam's doorstep with a shaved head. That was it. There was never a big deal made out of anything, no “A-Z of Being Trans”, no Riley explaining himself in big fat letters so that even cis readers will understand what was going on. It was so nonchalantly that I even convinced myself for a short while that I interpreted Riley as trans but that that wasn’t actually what Mandelo implied.
The villain of the story was interesting, because they weren't so obvious at first. At the contrary, the first time they showed up, I even complimented the tactful and kind way they talked to Andrew. Like I mentioned above, it was fairly in-your-face later on, but it wasn’t at first, and they weren’t acting like a villain in an obvious way even later on. You knew they were based on subtle things like the way they treated certain people, and their disgustingly racist family history , not simply based on their actions. They weren't going around using slurs or behaving ugly or reciting obvious villain monologues.
An aspect of the story I really appreciated was the criticism of racism in academia (especially for a book that’s adjacent to dark academia a bit). There was a side character named West who was supposed to mentor Andrew. He’d been at the school for almost seven years and his dissertation kept getting rejected. It was very obvious that it was due to racism, especially once you learnt about Troth’s family and her house being a former plantation home , but you still had Andrew not really grasping that. He never reacted to the few quips West made about it, and Riley fought with him for seemingly no reason (really, even to the end, I’m still not sure why they didn’t get along). And when Andrew suspected him of murdering Eddie, it was always pretty obvious that it wasn’t Eddie West had a problem with but Troth and the way they treated him, but Andrew overlooked that a lot. It was frustrating, but it was also realistic, and honestly, it did stop the story from being a white saviour trope, so that was probably good? After all, at the end of the book, West worked on getting justice himself, he didn't have Andrew or Riley fight his battles for him.
Overall, this was a bit of a challenging trip and a half. The characters were infuriating at times and the book was pretty repetitive and slow for like, at least half of it, but I loved the way it explored internalised homophobia, masculinity, and coming to terms with being too late. It made me feel very raw and emotional at times. Also, while I gave the book 4.5 stars at first, I bumped that up to 5 stars because I literally didn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the entire year (for context, this was the very first book I read in 2023).
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first. Especially the first half talked around a lot - the scenes kept repeating, the supernatural was confusing, the plot stagnated, the characters infuriated a bit. It was hard to convince myself to pick up the story again, knowing the main character would slog through life and not really acknowledge the problematic nature of others (mainly Sam for a very long time). And for a while, all that was happening was Sam pressuring Andrew to come out with him, a lot of alcohol and drugs, and car races. However, I have read a review (this one by Chai) where they talked about how this was kind of justified, since it emphasised Andrew's aimlessness and his grief. He’d just lost the most important person in his life and was utterly lost; how was he supposed to care about anything but finding out properly what happened? But still, it didn’t make for an enthusiastic reader.
Thankfully, after a while, things started to come together. While it was fairly predictable where the mystery surrounding Eddie’s death was concerned - the villain was easy to clock as the villain quite early on, to the point where I almost convinced myself it couldn’t be them because that was way too obvious and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to even expect a plot twist-, amusingly enough, I was way more invested and cared for the characters a lot more and suddenly had little trouble turning the pages (for a while at the beginning of the week, I literally read about twenty pages a day; later, that was tripled).
Like I mentioned above, the supernatural elements were a bit confusing. I understood the majority of it, but a lot of the time, I didn’t understand them while they were happening. And some parts I still don’t. It’s like I understood the overall theme of it, but if you asked me details about what exactly happened when Andrew was dealing with the revenant and being shown memories and waking up in deer carcasses or with slit wrists, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. That was a bit frustrating at times, since it was a pretty big part of the story.
My favourite thing about the book was the way Andrew grappled with his sexuality. At the beginning of the book, he wasn’t aware that he liked men and that he'd been in love with Eddie. Or rather, he seemed to have suppressed it so hard he wasn’t even aware that’s what he did. But when he went to Nashville to try and find out what happened to Eddie, it turned out that everyone thought he and Eddie had been a couple, and in all the six months he’d been there alone, Eddie’d never bothered to correct anyone. And that opened the dam inside of him - once he was made aware of it, it spilled out of him and he couldn’t put it back.
It was just written about so well! So much about his past explained why he and Eddie never went there, why it went unacknowledged. There was also a character named Del who added an interesting insight into their relationship. She was Andrew’s ex-girlfriend but had also been with Eddie at the same time as well.
I also appreciated that Eddie wasn’t painted as this perfect boy who would’ve made Andrew happy for the rest of his life if they’d gotten together. There were a lot of things said about him that made me side-eye him a little, which I didn’t like at first, but then I realised I kind of did? He wasn’t the perfect victim that was written about in a almost otherworldly way.
There was a little romance between Andrew and another male character, which I really wasn’t on-board at first; this other character had a lot of (implied and shown) racist and homophobic friends, which was something that was never really addressed once the romantic interest was explicitly there. But surprisingly, I did warm up to him. I also liked the way their relationship was built up, because it wasn’t all too obvious from the start that he was going to be a romantic prospect? At least not obvious to me, because he wasn’t really on my radar for that. In any way, he was mostly just a means to an end at first and read as just really bad news, and while the start of their romance was a bit sudden, it didn’t completely come out of the blue. It was just a lot more subtly built up than in other books.
The side characters were fascinating and fleshed-out. There was Riley, Sam’s cousin and Andrew’s roommate, who helped with the latter’s quest for answers and had himself a penchant for the supernatural. He was also trans, and I honestly loved the way Mandelo wrote about that. It was just things like a noticing of top surgery scars, hints that Riley used to have a different name, that he'd shown up on Sam's doorstep with a shaved head. That was it. There was never a big deal made out of anything, no “A-Z of Being Trans”, no Riley explaining himself in big fat letters so that even cis readers will understand what was going on. It was so nonchalantly that I even convinced myself for a short while that I interpreted Riley as trans but that that wasn’t actually what Mandelo implied.
The villain of the story was interesting, because they weren't so obvious at first. At the contrary, the first time they showed up, I even complimented the tactful and kind way they talked to Andrew. Like I mentioned above, it was fairly in-your-face later on, but it wasn’t at first, and they weren’t acting like a villain in an obvious way even later on. You knew they were based on subtle things like the way they treated certain people, and
An aspect of the story I really appreciated was the criticism of racism in academia (especially for a book that’s adjacent to dark academia a bit). There was a side character named West who was supposed to mentor Andrew. He’d been at the school for almost seven years and his dissertation kept getting rejected. It was very obvious that it was due to racism, especially once you learnt about
Overall, this was a bit of a challenging trip and a half. The characters were infuriating at times and the book was pretty repetitive and slow for like, at least half of it, but I loved the way it explored internalised homophobia, masculinity, and coming to terms with being too late. It made me feel very raw and emotional at times. Also, while I gave the book 4.5 stars at first, I bumped that up to 5 stars because I literally didn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the entire year (for context, this was the very first book I read in 2023).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Death, Racism, Slavery, Drug use, Grief, Homophobia, Murder, Sexual content, Suicide, and Violence
Minor: Transphobia, Death of parent, Car accident, and Child abuse
theoldestbennetsister's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Goddamn
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Death, Grief, Gore, Alcohol, and Blood
Moderate: Homophobia, Murder, Racism, Violence, Classism, Vomit, Suicide, Cursing, Death of parent, Drug use, Body horror, and Child abuse
Minor: Religious bigotry, Transphobia, Cancer, Child death, Animal death, Car accident, and Kidnapping
moonyreadsbystarlight's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I listened to the audiobook at the beginning of the year and then reread it in physical form. I fucking love this book. To see my initial thoughts, I do have a review up for the audiobook specifcially (Though I will copy/paste so that the reviews are visble on both editions).
Upon reread, I was able to really dig into things that I didn't notice on my first read. I knew it was really queer then, but I really got a good look at how the queerness is woven into everything: into Andrew's perspective and so many themes.The relationship between Eddie and Andrew is queer all the way down; not just queer as in not heterosexual, but queer as in defying labels -- ineffable -- both before and especially now that Eddie is a ghost. Looking at the haunting and lore around the curse, there is a lot (from my perspective - though I am not an expert on the genre) that gets turned on its head in a very queer way. Andrew is brought into the curse through his connection with Eddie, not through marriage or blood relation, but through a horrific twist on the idea of a curse passed on through bloodline. Another queer element is the blending of so many lines (making Andrew's surname - Blur - more than apt). Lines of relationships, of living and dead, of Andrew and Eddie themselves, of the themes of haunting and heartbreak and desire and suppression, of dream and wake -- I could probably go on but I will stop there.
There's so much about this that is devastatingly tender while also being raw and terrifying and unsettling as hell. There are so many details about this that I don't know how to articulate. But I am so glad that I did a reread and I already have other things that I plan on looking for when I reread it again.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Upon reread, I was able to really dig into things that I didn't notice on my first read. I knew it was really queer then, but I really got a good look at how the queerness is woven into everything: into Andrew's perspective and so many themes.
There's so much about this that is devastatingly tender while also being raw and terrifying and unsettling as hell. There are so many details about this that I don't know how to articulate. But I am so glad that I did a reread and I already have other things that I plan on looking for when I reread it again.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I was fairly excited about this when it came out -- the promise of queer spooky shit that reviewers I trust were raving about. But I was concerned because this isn't a genre I frequently read. It absolutely did not disappoint.
The first couple of hours, I was undecided. The characters seemed brash and unlikable (and the cheesy, wavering southern accent from the audiobook reader did not help). But at a certain point, the depth of the characters and the layers that were created in the story started to show and I was completely hooked.
This is a spooky southern dark academia, certainly. But I didn't expect such rich things happening with the characters and other parts of the story. This is full of messy people making questionable decisions. That raw vulnerability of messy queers in lit fic was absolutely here, and more than that, it was tied in thematically. The specter is what you discover it is through the lore, but it is also very much the ghost of permanently unrequited love -- a shadow, the result of (of course) death, but also of the unspoken, the unlived -- the fear and dissociation of homophobia by way of toxic masculinity.
This hits on other themes as well through the story, looking at corruption in academia and of wealth that is accumulated through death -- the (tied) legacies of white supremacy looking at old wealthy families and university. There is so much more I'm sure I could unpack given the time.
Looking at the characters, while they were certainly unlikable, they were complex and that built as the story goes on. I ended up really loving them and wanting to dig more into their characters and know what makes them tick (which often resulted in me pausing to speculate on what their birth charts probably looked like).
This is absolutely a book I intend on rereading and annotating, so maybe I'll wind up with an essay about it eventually, but this should be more than enough until then. This was such an incredible read and definitely surpassed my expectations.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Vomit, Death, Suicide, and Blood
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, and Child abuse
Minor: Cancer
shayna_hadassah's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Gore, Murder, Blood, Death, Drug use, and Sexual content
Moderate: Homophobia and Panic attacks/disorders
Minor: Transphobia, Child abuse, and Homophobia
moonyreadsbystarlight's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I was fairly excited about this when it came out -- the promise of queer spooky shit that reviewers I trust were raving about. But I was concerned because this isn't a genre I frequently read. It absolutely did not disappoint.
The first couple of hours, I was undecided. The characters seemed brash and unlikable (and the cheesy, wavering southern accent from the audiobook reader did not help). But at a certain point, the depth of the characters and the layers that were created in the story started to show and I was completely hooked.
This is a spooky southern dark academia, certainly. But I didn't expect such rich things happening with the characters and other parts of the story. This is full of messy people making questionable decisions. That raw vulnerability of messy queers in lit fic was absolutely here, and more than that, it was tied in thematically. The specter is what you discover it is through the lore, but it is also very much the ghost of permanently unrequited love -- a shadow, the result of (of course) death, but also of the unspoken, the unlived -- the fear and dissociation of homophobia by way of toxic masculinity.
This hits on other themes as well through the story, looking at corruption in academia and of wealth that is accumulated through death -- the (tied) legacies of white supremacy looking at old wealthy families and university. There is so much more I'm sure I could unpack given the time.
Looking at the characters, while they were certainly unlikable, they were complex and that built as the story goes on. I ended up really loving them and wanting to dig more into their characters and know what makes them tick (which often resulted in me pausing to speculate on what their birth charts probably looked like).
This is absolutely a book I intend on rereading and annotating, so maybe I'll wind up with an essay about it eventually, but this should be more than enough until then. This was such an incredible read and definitely surpassed my expectations.
UPDATE: Reread
I listened to the audiobook at the beginning of the year and then reread it in physical form. I fucking love this book. To see my initial thoughts, I do have a review up for the audiobook specifcially (Though I will copy/paste so that the reviews are visble on both editions).
Upon reread, I was able to really dig into things that I didn't notice on my first read. I knew it was really queer then, but I really got a good look at how the queerness is woven into everything: into Andrew's perspective and so many themes.The relationship between Eddie and Andrew is queer all the way down; not just queer as in not heterosexual, but queer as in defying labels -- ineffable -- both before and especially now that Eddie is a ghost. Looking at the haunting and lore around the curse, there is a lot (from my perspective - though I am not an expert on the genre) that gets turned on its head in a very queer way. Andrew is brought into the curse through his connection with Eddie, not through marriage or blood relation, but through a horrific twist on the idea of a curse passed on through bloodline. Another queer element is the blending of so many lines (making Andrew's surname - Blur - more than apt). Lines of relationships, of living and dead, of Andrew and Eddie themselves, of the themes of haunting and heartbreak and desire and suppression, of dream and wake -- I could probably go on but I will stop there.
There's so much about this that is devastatingly tender while also being raw and terrifying and unsettling as hell. There are so many details about this that I don't know how to articulate. But I am so glad that I did a reread and I already have other things that I plan on looking for when I reread it again.
UPDATE: Reread
I listened to the audiobook at the beginning of the year and then reread it in physical form. I fucking love this book. To see my initial thoughts, I do have a review up for the audiobook specifcially (Though I will copy/paste so that the reviews are visble on both editions).
Upon reread, I was able to really dig into things that I didn't notice on my first read. I knew it was really queer then, but I really got a good look at how the queerness is woven into everything: into Andrew's perspective and so many themes.
There's so much about this that is devastatingly tender while also being raw and terrifying and unsettling as hell. There are so many details about this that I don't know how to articulate. But I am so glad that I did a reread and I already have other things that I plan on looking for when I reread it again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Violence, Blood, Death, Drug use, Sexual content, and Vomit
Moderate: Homophobia, Child abuse, and Racism
Minor: Cancer
lilifane's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
There are soooo many things that I hate in this book. Alcohol and drug use, cars, violence, a huge amount of gore and some more... but I still loved it to pieces! I didn't hate those things here. The writing was so exceptional and immersive that I felt all those things, and they made sense. (FYI: The writing was also quite difficult to get into, be prepared to look words up a lot, but it's worth it to let the prose sink in.) For me, it was the perfect book with the perfect (slow) pacing and timing and perfectly imperfect characters. The story is so wild and unexpected that I had no idea where it was heading for about... 80% of the book. The character work is phenomenal. I would do anything for these characters. I love them so much.
There was one thing I was expecting from the story and I got it, but so much more of it and in an unexpected way. And there was one (huuuuuuuuuuuuge) aspect of the story I didn't expect at all. And it was fantastic in my opinion. But I would understand if it's not for everyone...
I could write so much more about this book, list all the things I loved about it. But what made the reading experience so good in the first place was the fact that I had no idea what was coming.
Quick shoutout to the acknowledgements which gave me life.
Lastly: Please check trigger and content warnings before reading. There are some really hard topics at the center of the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Death, Drug use, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, and Cancer
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Car accident, Death of parent, Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Homophobia, and Medical content