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How do I put this. This book made me pace a lot.

God. It's Machado's memoir of being in an abusive queer relationship. Each chapter is stylized or themed after a named topic; it worked for me because it was great framing for the (usually upsetting) content.

A later cluster of chapters lives rent-free in my head still. The Choose Your Own Adventure section? Oh my God. What a great use of form. It really hammered home how 1. bleak the relationship was by then 2. how repetitive the abuse was 3. how inescapable the abuse was (all of the page choices making you go back to the start of the day or a time of the day!!) 4. the extra meta chastisement from Machado if you just read the pages through straight, goddamn (“not following the CYOA rules doesn't mean you can escape that this happened”).

Despite the blooming of a queer romance, the pacing felt plodding to me and the world-building was feeling thrown-together. 

Despite three library extensions, I couldn't prioritize this one. Would love to return to it sometime.

Beautiful imagery and diction, though sometimes poetic to the point of being jarring or messing up reading flow. Still, really beautiful—sometimes cutting. I had to prepare myself to be in the headspace to read this because of the heaviness, sometimes.

It was exactly what the summary said–English woman prowling for hot goss at a church–and I thought I could hang, but I just wasn't feeling it! If I'm in more of this mood later, I might re-try.