Our Sweet Revenge

Once upon a time there were four men who came together for different reasons - yearning for home, internal insecurities, loneliness. And during the college years for some of them and early days at work for others, that sense of false security and belonging grew into an unlikely friendship, but a friendship nonetheless. The last shreds of that friendship, the struggles, failures, dreams and accomplishments of these four men - Ethan, Anthony, Chris and Jay - blend into a strikingly raw, emotionally intense and heartbreakingly profound story of how life can turn in an instant based not only on choices made, but also on external circumstances that sometimes cannot be prevented, no matter the efforts done. What made an immediate impression to me from the very beginning of the book was the foreboding sense of a storm brewing, and the tension that built as the plot unfolded. I was intrigued to see the slow unravelling of the foundation of their so called bonding, the way the illusion of something meaningful and deep between them started to dissolve and most of everything how these changes affected their lives and choices. One of the best examples was Chris, the social climber, who didn't hesitate for even a moment to use and manipulate his “best” friends - Anthony and Jay - for his own gain and to leave them behind like broken toys. Given time he would have found a way to utilise his friendship with the most delusional of all of them - Ethan- too. What the book described disturbingly well was that nothing is only black or only white but a variety of shades of grey and no one is 100% innocent.
The story reached an even darker, grimmer climax when the four were reunited in a place that held particular emotional significance for them - the cabin. It was fascinating in a deeply disturbing, emotionally jarring kind of way to finally see the reveal of a big part of the secrets between them and how much they hurt each other while chasing their inner desires and goals. It was a dark sinister game of mind manipulation and heavy dose of humiliation with the cruel bite of the promise of even more to come.