I wanted to love this book, and I did love the first half. The illustrations were a delightful surprise. There was a good amount of dread. I suppose I just wanted something different out of it. 

I didn’t really love how much time we spent with David as a child, I thought the chapters with him older could have been more fleshed out. It was also hard to tell how old he was in the “After” sections until pretty far into the book. 

And the framing of the beginning of the book, presenting it as a mystery, was misleading. What I wouldn’t give to read the book that delivered on that promise!

My main issue is spoilery.

I do understand what it was trying to do with mental illness, but coming into this book, I was really prepared for fantasy or scifi elements. I was expecting some real Dark (Netflix) energy, but it’s not. Any magical realism at all is David’s mind, and that was a bit of a disappointment. Especially since we don’t really get any solid hints of this in the early part of the book to prepare us.

I think if you come into the book not expecting a whole lot of fantasy/magical realism/scifi, you’ll have a better time with this than I did.