heartbreaking, devastating, and beautiful in equal measure. a true tour-de-force of a debut that will make you sit down and really, really think after you finish it.

Thank you Simon & Schuster for my Netgalley ARC of THE LOOKBACK WINDOW by Kyle Dillon Hertz, out 8/1/23.

Even though I have rewatched Law & Order: SVU 17 times, I did not know what a lookback window was. A lookback window is a set period, usually a year or two, where a victim of abuse is permitted to file a claim no matter when the abuse occurred. Basically, it affords survivors who were previously prohibited the opportunity to file a claim due to the statute of limitations.

This book follows Dylan, who spent three years as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of a disgusting man named Vincent. With a police investigation that initially went nowhere and years of unresolved trauma, Dylan has to make a decision when a lookback window through the Child Victims Act opens a period where he can sue his abusers, even now that the statute of limitations for the crimes perpetrated against him have run out.

This book is SO hard to read. Trigger warnings can’t even prepare you for what you will read. I had to put the book down on multiple occasions and take a lap around my house. It is triggering in every sense, it leaves you with a horrible taste in your mouth and reminds you how brutal and cruel and unfathomable humans can be. It follows Dylan as he has to ask himself…

Can you look back and move forward at the same time?

Does money represent justice after the filth and shame Vincent put him through?

Does pain from his past have a price for his present?

Can his love for his fiance live within the same body that is riddled with shame and trauma and guilt?

Can clarity be found in the back of a bar, a bathhouse, a bond fueled by trauma?

This book is one of the best I have read in a long time. Its subject matter, story, characters and prose are that of literary greatness. While it is hard to read, it is worth it to see how Dylan comes out the other side of the lookback window. Just know that it is not an easy journey. You never stop rooting for Dylan, but he is a victim of abuse and he does not shy away from pure self-destruction. Can you believe this is a debut? Because I sure can’t. Pick this one up, but only if you are ready to wonder if justice ever really gets rid of the hurt.

64%
I was off and on enjoying this debut. I liked Dylan’s feelings. They felt real and aligned with the way he acted. I wasn’t getting lost on his situation because of the characters James, Moans, and Alexander. They confused me. I wasn’t able to comprehend James and remember who he is.
This author has potential. I just think there needs to be more cohesion with the characters and story.

truly the <i>norman fucking rockwell!</i> of literature. man, this one was brutal.

I’m not sure how much, if any, of this book is drawn from Hertz’s own experience but the character of Dylan is written with such emotion and conviction that I had to keep reminding myself this was not a memoir. this is a really heavy read, not a happy or hopeful one. it’s a story of Dylan in the aftermath of being sexually abuse as a teenager; adult Dylan is now getting married and starting to seek therapy and justice against the men who abused him. it’s truly a sadly realistic look at the effects of abuse- he is a frustrating character to follow, you SO BADLY want to root for him, but he just keeps spiraling down destructive paths and decisions, relying heavily on drugs and other sexual experiences to fulfill. it’s very raw (it reminded me a lot of comp title <i>Yes, Daddy</i> ) and watching Dylan unravel can be difficult to stomach at times, but it’s a fascinating and important literary debut from Hertz.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the Publisher in exchange for an honest review*

This debut was so so so visceral, brutal, and real.
Our protagonist has been constantly running from the abuse and sex-trafficking forced onto him as a child. Constantly looking forward to survive, the Child Victims Act has forced him to look back upon his trauma. His present day life begins to crumble as his past tortures him daily. How do we get justice for these heinous acts? What does it mean to survive? How do we go on and live a normal life after surviving such abuse?
This has no holds barred, and comes at you with such raw honesty.

Make sure you come at this book from a good mental space, there are no euphemisms here to hide behind.

"The Lookback Window" was a beautiful, heart-wrenching book.

It's the story of Dylan, a victim of sex trafficking and rape at the age of 14, on the cusp of a new law's passage in New York that allows victims of sexual assault to have a year's window to bring a civil lawsuit against their rapists even if the statute of limitations has passed. Dylan just got married to his new husband Moans while he is rediscovering his trauma, and Moans, although he had a painful past, doesn't understand what happened to Dylan, and maybe Dylan doesn't want him to understand.

Dylan goes through a long dark night of the soul, looking back at that time in his life, descending into a haze of drugs, overdoses, therapy and recovery, as he interviews law firms, navigates the challenges of the legal system and tests the boundaries of loyalty, love and friendships.

This was a difficult book to read because it goes into graphic detail into the traumatic scenes of Dylan's series of forcible rapes, his drug abuse to self-medicate as a young adult, the way he uses people to escape his trauma, and the challenges of bringing rapists to justice in a legal system that relies on what you can prove, not on how it makes you feel or ruins your life. But it's an important, powerful book to read and a necessary one, shining a fluorescent light on the sexual assault victims that people don't talk about, when it happens to men.

Kyle Dillon Hertz is a fresh, singular new voice with a stunning, crisp, emotional writing style, and I look forward to reading more of his work. This is a work of staggering, impeccably searing beauty.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Harrowing, heartbreaking, and impossible to put down. A recommended first purchase for all collections.

A Masterfully Written Novel!

As a childhood sexual abuse victim by male abusers, I agreed to review this book with feelings of reserved curiosity. Nevertheless, I was quickly impressed with the writer’s style. Hertz demonstrates a mastery of English with his colorful use of words to set the theme and plot and convey his characters’ thoughts and feelings.

Hertz takes you on the painful journey of Dylan, the main character, to find peace with his traumatic past of horrific childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a duplicitous boyfriend who pimped him out to a group of pedophiles. In addition, this boyfriend introduced him to a world of severe drug use and sex addiction. Dylan struggles through it into adulthood, making many mistakes while trying to get justice against his abusers. Yet the clock is ticking, with the statute of limitations against crimes committed many years before. Ultimately, Dylan obtains much-needed evidence to cinch his case with the FBI.

This was a book that I found hard to put down and compelled to keep reading. As a sexual abuse victim, I empathized with Dylan, understood his many struggles, and wanted justice for his abusers. I loved this novel until the end, and I’m sure you will too.

I received an ARC of the Kindle and voluntarily submitted this review.

You don't so much read this book as experience it. I don't even feel right reviewing it because the book doesn't maintain an arms length distance from the reader, if that makes any sense. The book provides an unvarnished look at the messiness of recovery from childhood sexual abuse. Dylan is getting better but is also doubling back and recreating trauma to try to beat it this time. One of the toughest parts to read was the slow process of acceptance of what he had lost, including what he could have been. The book redefines heroism as the actions needed to move away from mere survival, and there is no cheap sentimentality attached to the concept at all. Dylan wants what he calls vengeance and not justice but I think he is too hard on himself. Justice is so elusive for him that he doesn't feel entitled to it. Thanks to the author for this unflinching journey with this character.

another netgalley one. really loved this, got annoyed with work for pulling me away. a visceral exploration of trauma and abuse. the final chapter wrapped things up a little too neatly for me, but ultimately didn't really detract. glancing over the reviews before i started i didn't know what exactly the gay novel version of norman fucking rockwell would look like, but turns out it is exactly this

An advance reader copy of the book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

*TW - discussion of sexual abuse/drug use*

4 1/2 stars rounded up to 5

THE LOOKBACK WINDOW is a propulsive, well-written, and deeply moving debut novel by Kyle Dillon Hertz, chronicling a period of recovery and introspection in the period of time when the Child Victims Act expanded the statute of limitations to allow the pursuit of cases of child sexual abuse beyond the previous time limit.

The novel's protagonist, Dylan, is on the precipice of marrying his longtime boyfriend, Moans, a steady presence in his life who has been a sort of rock for him as they have navigated their own separate traumas parallelly through their shared life/lives. When Dylan was younger, he was repeatedly drugged and pimped out by an older man, raped and abused and photographed/recorded in the process. Now, nearly ten years later, he continues to struggle with the aftermath of what happened to him. When the Child Victims Act and its one-year ticking time clock to file a case (the "lookback window" of the novel's title) enters into the equation, it shakes up Dylan's life and sends him on a dangerous journey in search of justice and a way forward for himself that can allow him to live with and beyond the shadow of his past.

Hertz's novel is compulsively readable - as each chapter concluded, I kept wanting to read on, feeling at turns anxious, unsteady, hopeful, infuriated along with the protagonist in his search of some semblance of peace and justice. Everything Dylan goes through in the novel feels incredibly "real" and palpable, even the most horrendous moments recounted from his past. Readers should be forewarned that this novel deals with some very dark, disturbing, and visceral events involving sexual abuse and drug use especially, and those events are rendered with raw and descriptive language. As a reader, I appreciated that Hertz didn't pull punches, and that he used the power of his writing as a tool to bring a reader into both the dark/disturbing and hopeful aspects of his protagonist's life, to consider both the effects of trauma on survivors of abuse but also the flaws of our judicial system in seeking comeuppance for past wrongs.

I think this is a particularly important novel in the contemporary queer literary canon for its frank depiction of abuse. In a literary landscape where so many queer novels are dealing with coming-out, romance, marriage, and only occasionally messy or darker themes and storylines, I think we need more novels like THE LOOKBACK WINDOW.

I'm giving this novel 5 stars, rounded up from 4 1/2, because in the early chapters of the novel, when Dylan and Moans are visiting a clothing-optional resort in Fort Lauderdale, while I understood that these scenes were introducing the concept of the Child Victims Act and Dylan's reaction to it within the framework of the novel, I wasn't hooked and fully along for the ride of the novel until they had returned from their trip and the reader was pulled more into Dylan's day-to-day life. I wished for more of a knockout start to the story - but once I was grabbed by the book, there was no "lookback."

The Lookback Window is raw and powerful. It’s a story that fearlessly tackles childhood trauma, rape, drugs, and abuse.

Dylan is a man who struggles daily because of the horrors of what happened to him as a child- he was pimped out, drugged, and raped. It has left him completely vulnerable, possibly addicted, and incapable of a normal relationship. When the Lookback law is activated, Dylan has a year to pursue legal action on the men that tormented him.

There really are no words to describe this book. The writing is beautiful and the story compelling and very, very sad. It shows an attempt to fight out of the deepest of darkness.

If Dorothy Parker were a tweaked millennial with wicked PTSD, she would sound something like Dylan, the narrator of this hallucinatory and beautiful novel about the aftermath of sexual abuse. Dylan skewers himself and his fellow gay party boys with tragically funny one-liner descriptions, one way he keeps his unbearable emotions at bay. Physical sensations come into hyper-focus, while the men in his life are ciphers with no surnames, professions, or interests outside their tumultuous sexual relationship with him. (I admit being confused by why his partner was named "Moans"-- was it a nickname or what?)

"The Lookback Window" literally refers to a one-year grace period within which Dylan could bring a civil claim against the men who sex-trafficked him as a teenager. As a metaphor, it describes the window through which he perceives everything in the present. He's always both reliving and running away from his trauma. This novel stood out for its immersive and accurate portrayal of how PTSD reshapes one's consciousness. Dylan's perception of time is layered and fractured rather than linear. He is both hypervigilant and numb. There's so much pain here but also incredible beauty because he can never just coast through life -- he feels deeply and analyzes obsessively, perceiving truths that others miss.

Something about the ending didn't quite ring true for me. It seemed like a genre shift, from a book that was brutally honest about the messiness and longevity of trauma, to a more conventional form of closure. Not that I didn't believe he would recover, but that the resolution took place externally whereas the whole rest of the book focused on his inner life. I would have liked fewer repetitive scenes of self-destructive sex and drug addiction, and some more fleshing out of the aftermath of his actions against the perpetrators. I almost didn't believe that the unnamed boyfriend in the epilogue was real.

I received an electronic ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

(cw: sexual assault, abuse, trauma)

"Language failed me for many years."

I don't know how long it took Kyle Dillon Hertz to find the voice for this narrator but I'm willing to wager it took a very long time. The narrative distance is just right—not too immediate to be re-traumatizing, but close enough for the first-person narrator to find some form of resolution for his trauma through language. There are deliberate almost-roughness or brusque textures in the prose, which I found a godsend because it allowed me as a reader to keep the right amount of distance.

Dylan, the main character, is a victim of child sex trafficking and is trying to find the language to capture and let go of what he went through. Then one day, a "lookback window" is legislated, suspending the statute of limitations for sex crimes against minors and enabling victims to at least sue for civil damages against their abusers. Dylan has to make a choice: does he use the lookback window to directly confront his abusers, and if he does, what could possibly come of it?

Throughout the book, there are many instances of the failure of language. As a child, the silence surrounding male victims of abuse deprived him of the language to understand what was happening to him. Then, when he goes to the police for the first time—years after the abuse—even then he could not find the language to give the authorities enough probable cause to make an arrest. A really interesting series of scenes are those with his therapist, who recognizes the problem but seems unable to give Dylan what he needs, showing how even the language of therapy can fail ("He wanted me to establish a narrative, ordering the events of my life in such a manner that they would be stored properly in my brain. As they were currently stored, the memories permitted my reactive mind to take over, like a hitchhiker picked up on the side of the road").

This failure of language is commented on many times throughout the text:

"You think because some sh*t resembles other sh*t that I can understand the meaning? That wasn’t totally true. I understood exactly what he meant, but I couldn’t express the meaning in words."

“I will tell you something. There are cases that you think about and cases you forget. I remember your case now, but I don’t think about it. It hurt not to get these guys back then, but so much worse happens around here. Every day. And then you have the backlog in your mind. I am not numb to anything, but I look at the world from the perspective that it seems unreal and is real too.”

Dylan finally finds a way to confront his abusers. After trying and realizing that neither self-destruction nor violence against his abusers or even compensation money really would give him what he needs, he turns to that one thing that failed him every time: language. He happens to learn how to entrap his abusers with it, how to confront them with it. This scene, the climax of the book, is truly harrowing—and he exchanges no blows, no bullets with his abuser. Only words. And it works.

The genius of this book is that while it endlessly acknowledges the failure of language, it also acknowledges how it can also be miraculous, unexpectedly succeeding where all else has failed. Dylan, who for his whole life couldn't express his meaning in words, suddenly finds himself overflowing with language:

"Surrounded by strangers who could barely utter their own histories, I witnessed the start of a new era. I told the story in groups and in individual sessions. I could talk about everything."

And towards the end of the book, in an ending so cinematic and beautiful that it brought me to tears, the narrator reveals whom he is writing the book for—"Do you know I scream for you? I want you to see what it looks like to let go"—and passes on his language to the reader. This book itself is the final miracle, a thing that succeeded where all other language has failed.