Her Love, Like Poison

Coming from It Gets So Lonely Here, I was honestly expecting an improvement since this one was paid. In short, I grabbed a few buddies to VA with and... We got bored by the midpoint of the novel, I ended up skimming through the rest solo to see what'd happen. While it gets more interesting later on, it simply isn't worth the time or money. The novel constantly berates you with metaphors that really lose their spark after you've seen the ninth or tenth one in a row, I thought the writing prose was really awkward to read at times, and honestly it was just a slog to get through. The idea sounded really interesting and the latter parts really live up to that intrigue that's found in the trailer! But ultimately it's covered with so much padded text in the beginning that'll knock you into a slumber before you get anywhere near the interesting tidbits. If there's anything else to take away, it's that less is more. Strip away at the meaningless descriptions of the sidewalk, or the way Ethel walks through the forest and you'd have maybe a 1-2 hour long novel that's constantly keeping you engaged. I'd much rather shill out money for that than something that feels bloated for the sake of word count. 5/10, interesting concept but it's execution could've been baked a lot longer.