Ant

The main character was so insufferable that I genuinely can't tell if this book was dragging on for too long or if my exposure to him made every page feel 3x longer than it actually was.

It kind of works for this book, though! The dude's a pedantic narcissist with a tenuous grasp on reality, so seeing that reflected in the experience of reading the dude's LITERAL memoir helped me stay sane.

That being said, the book is well written, and it does a fine job of planting the right seeds at the right moments narratively—I just wish getting to the payoff wasn't so painful! I'd forgotten why I put this book down last year after getting through 20% of it; but I don't entirely regret trudging through it this time. It was a pretty good read, would recommend it to people that like themes of religious abuse and unreliable/unlikable narrators.

I dunno man. I feel like I’m missing something here. Every page of this book just rings hollow. I don’t think I’ve ever SEEN a novel with descriptions this bizarre and tedious. There’s just something seriously off about the way some passages are written in this book, like:

”The story, acting, special effects, and especially the gore were all top-notch, and as the cast of characters descends into madness, murder, and mayhem, it just gets darker and darker until it’s chilling finale.”

or:

“I ran into my room, put my shoes on, and grabbed my fitted Nike hat, making sure to spin it backward before unlocking the left side sliding glass door and stepping onto the stone pathway that ran parallel with the house until making a turn into the driveway.”

or this gem:

”The twins, as I called them, hardly ever referring to them individually by their real names, Jill and Jenny, were, to me, one entity.”