“
We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.”
This book is so, so, so lovely and yet endlessly frustrating. It starts out as a deliciously creepy mystery with soft tones of childish defence mechanisms and simple escapism. The idea that Abe should be telling his stories as a way of coping with death, loss and tragedy is beautiful, sincere and believable. The subtle hints that there may hide something even darker beneath the thin layer of make-believe are disturbing. The first 100 pages of this book were everything I had imagined it to be; filled with strangeness and peculiarity.
The last 250 pages were, however, a mess. The book pulled itself in two opposite directions; what started out as a haunting mystery turned into a fantasy novel with odd elements of teen-romance. Plot holes started to appear, and confusion washed in over me in crashing waves. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to feel, or what the novel was trying to be. It was marketed as one thing and written as another.
“
I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”
The characters are poorly developed and the circumstances surrounding them are bleak. Riggs' writing is beautiful; but it never comes to life, it never draws you in completely. The passage I loved most in this book, was the prologue. Everything moved slowly downhill after that.