*SPOILERS*

I went in to this book with that expectation that it would be something very different from what it is. I think what I imagined was a sort of whimsical game of one-upmanship between two unlikely pranksters, but this is most definitely not that. And I think anyone planning on reading this ought to go in blind.

I firstly feel I should mention how much I love the setting. I think a hotel which is a ghost of that old world elegance is such a brilliant backdrop. I also wasn't too deterred by the pandemic backdrop. While I suppose it could be considered a 'Covid Novel' it very much does not feel like one, and I think it made sense as an explanation for the confinement of the novel. For the first few chapters, I felt some genuine compassion for the main character Maggie. It seemed as though despite her meddling, and some eluding to a dark past that she was just a very lonely person who lost the people close to her, and is seeking to replace in many ways the family she lost with the people she finds herself around. I found Otto's almost immediate dark turn to be so shocking and cruel, and in that first instance- was sort of on Maggies side. But the brilliance of this book comes in the fact that nothing is as it seems.

It occured to me pretty quickly that Maggie's recollections of the past were... inconsistent. I really enjoy an unreliable narrator, and trying to decipher truth from reality once this doubt was introduced was the most gripping part of the story for me.

I really didn't expect this book to be as dark as it was. Of course there is the obvious, surface level darkness- a sociopathic child hell bent on destroying this woman's life and sanity, and of course more disturbingly her brazen want to kill said child, attempts to kill said child, and/or attempts to frame him for the other crimes she has committed. That is, if any of that even happened. By the end I find myself questioning. Then of course, you have the true darkness in Maggie's past. Her clinging to a false narrative, her refusal and accept the reality of who the person she loved was, and the guilt and confusion contorting her perception as a result. 

I could write several essays, and discuss for hours the symbolism present in this book. Julia's 'deaths', the one in her childhood (the loss of her innocence) and the one where Maggie refuses to acknowledge her existence. Maggie's 'condition' being a guilty conscience manifesting the daughters injuries she ignored. It is all incredibly clever, and brilliant and it makes me very much wish I had read this along with someone else so I could discuss it all! I do wish that we got a bit more closure around some of the subplots. I really would have liked to know what happened to Ahmed as an example, and I think the pacing of the sudden sharp decline of our main character at the books end didn't really allow for that. I understand why. We are meant to question everything we have read thus far, and so it make sense it all needed to be left open to interpretation-but I personally always find endings that inconclusive a little deflating.