Krysten’s Review

How many people out there are responsible for some tragedy and don’t even know it?

I’m a sucker for good covers, and this one caught my eye right away. Couple that with the intriguing concept of the story being told in reverse order, and I was hooked before I’d even started.

Megan Miranda’s writing style is compelling, and her descriptions—like her characters—are dark, beautiful, twisted and relatable. At first, it was difficult for me to connect with the main character, Nic; she seems cold and detached, and definitely guarded. At first, the lengthy narratives, in which Nic recounts memories from 10 years ago, seem unnecessarily long and somewhat extraneous. At first. But the further you get into this book, the more you realize that this is Nic’s defense mechanism, that everything she tells us has meaning:

…I can handle [the story] only in flashes. […] I have to come at it from the side, grazing pieces here and there. Not looking it directly in the eye. I’ve never told it before. This is the only way I know how.

Miranda’s theme of the “monster” is artfully woven throughout the story. We begin to connect with Nic, even as she implies that she is not as innocent as we think—nor are any of the other characters. Not many people know what it’s like when a friend disappears, to be the subject of a police investigation, to wonder what really happened but be unable to talk about it… But we can understand that everybody does bad things—good people and bad. We can understand not being able to face the bad things we have done. We all have a little bit of monster in us:

Wasn’t a stretch to imagine a monster, even. Watching and waiting and making you do things. Breathing in the lick of smoke as the teenagers made a fire. Watching them fall all over each other in a heap of beautiful limbs. Feeling the cold dirt settle under its nails as it waited, listening to the theories and the stories and the bullshit. Waiting until they fell asleep so it could creep back to the caverns and see what—if any—secrets they had to offer.

It’s not so hard. From where they were sitting, there was something doing the same, and they had no idea.

Right then I was the monster.

Even as Miranda (through Nic) tells us about a horrible event, the horrible things they all did, the horrible aftershocks that forever changed their lives, her language is beautiful yet conversational.

This is one of those books that you really need to read more than once to pick up on all the clues, the breadcrumbs Miranda drops throughout the story. (I’d even be curious to read it backwards, in chronological order, to see how the story changes.) This was my first book by Miranda, but it won’t be my last!

Special thanks to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book for review.