It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on violent crime, grief, murder, distorted body image, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual-based violence, clinical distress, the death of an animal, & others.

Ample are the parameters, definers, symptoms, & faces of grief. The altruistic nature of the sentiment prevents the shadow of emptiness from hovering over a future horizon, perhaps never to be met by the sufferer. The quotidian rhythm of existence promises grief in the rise & fall of all that we do; there is no way to avoid loss. However, grief is not simply a loss. In its own beautiful way, grief speaks to something unknown; a splinter in the beast itself. Culture will define grief & will prevent it from growing tall; nipping it at the heels with the poignant hymn of truth. Yet, one must ask; What is the truth?

When I requested this book I knew not what to expect. This is perhaps a silly statement. Rarely do I endeavour into books that gift me a clear idea of what they wish to present. I have always been a reader who prefers the silent miss-matching of story & mind. The ambiguous clarity provided by a synopsis is one I usually forfeit altogether; I have done this too long not to read the shaded colours & stencilled shapes on the wall. In this particular case, I was glad to hold my ignorance. The format of the story is adopted primarily to sequester a reader in what might be a primal stance; to be victim, victor, or vanquished.

In essence, this story is about Jane. It appears trite to say that the story relies upon Jane’s disorders to reel the reader into submission but, this is the truth. The story opens with Jane’s redundancy. Her mornings see the consequence of dread filling her lungs after a night of being caught in the riptide of her illness (Bulimia Nervosa). She runs the city, scours her room, rides the train to work, eats a salad, occupies every free second with her best friend, hitchhikes her way home through pizza joints & doughnut shops, & repeats her dissociated dance of online activity & purges evidence of nutrition into the bellies of the toilet bowl.

Jane’s story is split into three parts. The first of which explores the first-hand experiences of Jane’s diligent & harmful cycle, as listed in the paragraph above. In between the sections that read like a malevolent tornado, Jane meets men; she sleeps with them, runs the pedestrian’s path with them, & works on literary projects with them. All the while, Jane remains essentially unknown to all the people around her. This first section is meant to act as both a cautionary tale & a reminder that the mundane sickness of life may not end us but, death is certainly around the corner. That is to say, Jane’s life is sad to take in.

Readers unfamiliar with the cycle of distress that accompanies an eating disorder may feel just as suffocated as readers who have felt the weight of horror in their bodies & bones. Montague works diligently to prevent the reader from forgetting who Jane is. Rather than stick to the mounds of dread, scratchy throats, & dirty bile; Montague reminds readers that Jane is a person misunderstood; she has likes & dislikes, passions & terrors. All the things that make the reader the essence of who they are also exist in Jane. This is what made her section both insightful & ruefully grievous. Through the pages of repeated daily activity, Jane becomes a person that the reader wishes to know. Some form of the fingers on the pages longs to intervene before it is too late.

Throughout this section, I found myself actively engaged in the anthropologist’s role. Would Jane be able to find peace? Which of the men in Jane’s life murdered her? Every morning run reminded me of the curious nature of life; our habits shape the day as we move through it, tedious as they sometimes seem. However, in so far as I found Jane’s section engaging, the narrative lost steam because we learned so little about her environment. This was most likely done intentionally.

Jane is the victim of a violent crime, her section could not be the length of a tome, she was nearing her final days & it was soon time that the reader shifted points of view to better understand the narrative at play. Regardless, I felt taxed as a consequence of a morbid existence, otherwise seen as being Jane’s life.

The redundancy of Jane’s life shifts to welcome a new character, Jesse. The second part of the story explores a tertiary point of view of the crime. The players the reader grew accustomed to seeing in the backdrop of Jane’s life become the villains; men with voices too loud to discern clearly.

Jesse’s role is as an investigator for the Defendant, Jeremy. In all sincerity, I preferred this section to the two others because it felt real in a way that is difficult to achieve in writing. Jesse’s life is flawed & hurtful; his days are wrought with anxiety & pain. His family life consists of hours spent guiding his mother through repetitions brought on by her Dementia & attempting to prevent her from losing hope in the darkness brought on by her mind. Jesse’s narrative was raw, earnest, pleading, ambitious, & genuine. His person brought realism to a plot that introduced the reader to people they might never understand & then, here came Jesse, a character who could also be their friend.

Notable in this section is how Montague wrote the turmoil of a terminal diagnosis alongside the finality of death at the hands of another. In both cases, for both women—Jane & Jesse’s mother—the end of their lives became a truth they were not privy to learning. While Jesse attempted to wander in the dark to find the pieces of his mother that might still exist in her mind, he also attempted to find the truth in the void left behind by Jane’s murder. The links between both women are ample & a diligent reader will piece together the ropes that tie them to one existence; that of a woman without agency.

I found Jesse to be amiable & warm. His earnest pursuit of the truth among all the shaded groves of different people & their experiences, helps the plot move forward but it also grants it the girth that it needs. In many ways, both the first & the third sections do nothing to speak to the reader & rather seek to isolate them from the narrative at play.

At times, the secrecy behind an intentional intellect—think a philosopher without any lived experience to rely on—confounds this story into a heaping waste of time. The legal aspects are not explored in the first & third sections; the grainy details of the crime of homicide are not brought forward by any of the characters & rather, these sections poise the characters to make everything about their person, forgetting the societal implications of selfishness.

This is, as I have said many times in my writing, not meant to be cruel. Rather, the author allows the reader to deduce that the real storyteller is Jesse. He is the driver of the story, the hero, & victor throughout all the chaos caused by two people who were egotistically overly involved in themselves.

This truth made Jesse more appealing. The links between the deterioration of the brain & the body as well as the reality that horrors succeed without humanity being capable of concluding rationales is the crux of what is bulbous, overwhelming, & distressing both in life & in fiction. However, upon reflection, I wonder still about the reality of the case.

Jane’s cell phone was found in the dumpster at her office building. Jane was having an affair with her boss, Tom, & she knew that he had the business appraised for an obscene amount of money. By the end of the second section, we learn that Tom was accused of the crime but was acquitted. Why is that?

It will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows their way around the legal system that the processes are not always correct nor are they efficient. If Tom did not murder Jane, who did? How would Tom have known where Jane ran? How would Tom have known that Jane would have heard him calling to her in the alleyway? Had Tom met Aaron? Did Tom know that Aaron usually met Jane down the laneway from where she was murdered? Had he accounted for the fact she might not be alone or that other people were awake during this hour of the morning?

There are so many variables that could & should be analyzed before concluding that the murder was committed by Tom. What is apparent & dull is that the justice system did not ask any of these questions.

In the state of New York, the Double Jeopardy, also known as the Fifth Amendment, prevents a person who has been acquitted of a crime from being tried again for the same crime. Therefore, Tom is a free man. I reflect on this fact because the logistics do not make sense to me. None of the men regarded as possible suspects in Jane’s murder were approached with dedicated caution. Jesse came across the evidence of Jane’s affair with Tom at random. Why was he not being properly investigated from the start?

Certainly, my questions are somewhat annoying because they will bring the reader no clarity. Though multiple characters claim that Jane’s schedule is meticulous, a murder in the morning is too risky to be well-planned. One can easily assume that Jane was not running in the dark of 4:00 AM but rather closer to 6:00 or 7:00 AM given the number of people out & about. This speaks to the personality trait at play as we know for a fact that Jane walked around the city alone at night between restaurants & bars. What I seek to highlight with these questions is not that the irresolution of her murder is flawed but that the story is not about the crime.

The third part of the book drives home my point as Jeremy is introduced via his own experiences as he interviews for a podcast. The desolate & lovely gore of the story is sadly lost entirely in the third part.

Perhaps the author sought to allow the vanquished man to hold his court & share his truth. In some ways, allowing Jeremy the chance to speak to his experiences as the accused feels just; his life will forever be altered by the suspicion that lingered on the cellphone tower. Yet, if one looks back to the perusal through the logistics of the murder, one is left wondering (again) whether the judicial bodies did any work in this case, at all.

Jeremy, like Jane, held a meticulous schedule & visited similar places, over & over again. The suspicion that he might have been responsible for Jane’s murder arises simply because his cellphone pinged off a tower near the scene of the crime. Of course, reading Jeremy’s section does nothing to incite confidence in his character; rather he reads as a very tedious liar but, I digress.

If one were to properly seek to understand the case against Jeremy, one would be left exasperated. Perhaps the author sought to include this final section to encourage the ambiguous ending; maybe, Jeremy did murder Jane. This leaves me asking what the point of the story is, if, in fact, the driving force is the men who do very little of anything worth reading throughout the entire story.

From a neutral point, one can accept that it is kind to allow Jeremy to close off the story. However, this story is not about him so the narrative feels as though has lost its essence. Is this the point of the book? Are readers meant to conclude that a woman’s truth is lost as a consequence of a man’s presence/involvement? I am not convinced that this is the moral of the story. Rather, I feel quite comfortable in concluding that the author was simply writing to write; the final section shows a flexed finger as Montague quotes great writers whose word use reinforces the burden of existence whereas her book simply showcases the lost causes that exist in between rumbling subway stations.

The dialogue between Jeremy & the podcast host did not insight knowledge into the story, nor did it create space for reflecting on what the story was actually about. Perhaps, because I was not a fan of who Jeremy was; after sections of blabbering about being a writer with talent & time; I found myself wishing for the book to end so that I was relieved of the boredom that accumulated around the third section.

Truthfully, had his character been set up as a man of men, a person with flaws but the ability to not be chauvinistic & rather daft, I might not have felt as I did. Unfortunately, looming in the centre of the cream egg was mould & I did not see the purpose in writing pages about a man who made clear who he was in each section of the book.

Ultimately, this is a good book & one I would recommend to other readers. I long to meet Jesse again & I hope that the sorrow of his life is healed. He was not a perfect person but he was a person in all his entirety, making him a man I grew eager to know.

Just as I have chosen a favourite section, other readers will meet the parts of the story they deem valuable & agreeable. One is left wondering if the purpose of transcribing human horror is lost on the three subcategories of readers who will approach this book as I have & then also, in completely different ways.

The burden of grief lays itself raw to the reader in the failed investigations & cruel characters that once appeared as best friends. The essence of a person is never quite lost as we live inside the story & reality that exists in the brains of others. Jane, a woman who was quiet & ill, was also mean & uninterested, while simultaneously being catastrophically numb to life, she sought out its warmth & excitement in any place she could.

In just such a way, may the reader find that each of the characters is more than they appear yet, not a lie of who they hope to be. Much of the burden of loss exists because the imagery we hold is no longer visible to us until we become one with the illusion that shelters our person from days that continue to move forward without the comfort of those who are no more.

Thank you to NetGalley, Mulholland Books, & Eugenie Montague for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I loved the premise and was excited to read the book. I found parts of it to be a bit confusing, especially towards the end. The pacing was a bit slow at times and felt like the book could have used a bit more editing. Overall, I enjoyed the story and writing.

Oh my god, I don’t know where to start with this book. It’s a ride, and the experience is hard to put into words, and the author put it into some very nice words already so really just go read it. But I’m going to write a review anyways because I can’t shut up <3

Okay so it’s divided into three parts, basically. You’ve heard this before, it’s in the synopsis. The first one is about this woman named Jane (get it, Jane Doe. I think so, anyways) and she literally just wakes up every morning (unbelievable, right? I could never), goes to work, hangs out with her friend, and has situationships with men. That’s it, that’s the first section. I’m not going to elaborate because I can’t. I summed it up pretty well, if I do say so myself.

We go through a typical day for her, and then another, and then another, and then another. It just repeats, over and over and over, nothing different except for maybe a conversation or two, all while the dread and dispair builds and builds, and absolutely nothing happens. You’ll search “hand sanitizer” in the ebook to see how often that line comes up, and then you’ll have to search it again because you won’t remember the number the first time. While that may sound boring, it’s so not.

It’s eerie and liminal, and it would fit right in on a weird book list. It’s about the horrors of repetition and repetition and mundanity (and capitalism); it’s about unspoken existential dread and how no one really knows what they want in life. It feels like a fever dream and so real at the same time. It’s like going to Walmart at 2am, back before Covid when it stayed open all night, and the only people there were the cashiers and that guy on the big vacuum. You’ll wonder when things will change. They do, but they don’t.

It’s also heavily about The Innernoot and it really makes you think about how much of social media is real, not just in the sense of curated, aestheticized profiles of people who are only showing the best of themselves, but also in the marketing and propaganda and lying-for-shits-and-giggles way. As a much more articulate reviewer than I has said: “When identities can be so easily fabricated through social media, art, and miscommunication where does the genuine self end and the created version begin?“

(also i must say, props for calling twitter Twitter. this book deserves a pat on the head for that alone)

The second part is basically a murder mystery, and our detective is Jesse. Jesse alternates between his job (detectiving) and taking care of his mother with dementia. Jesse was annoying and I disliked him immensely, but I enjoyed the whodunnit. (I’m going to stop saying Jesse now. Okay, really, I promise.) It was more character focused than fast paced action with shocking plot twists, which is always refreshing for a mystery. Some may complain that the resolution wasn’t great, and while I understand, I also think it made sense for this particular story to wrap like that.

The third bit is a (fictional) podcast transcript, and I did NOT enjoy it. It stars Jeremy, who is nearly as bad as Jesse. I slogged through, hoping it would tie up the other parts better or at least have good payoff, but it didn’t and it was very unnecessary. Luckily it was short.

I LOVE the writing. It’s very contemporary and blunt and sort of detached, and there were some really interesting lines that just made me pause and go “wow that’s a good line.” I just really love this type of style.

If you enjoy being confused as much as I do you will love this. Do be aware, however, that it may include some more “niche” triggers like bulimia and caring for someone with dementia. I think both topics were handled really well, though, and I didn’t find it to be particularly disturbing.

I’m going to rate the parts 5, 4, and 2 stars, respectively. I’m giving it a 4 over all, because the first half was good 🤌 fucking 🤌 soup. 🤌 and I ate it up and loved every minute. I will think about this book frequently.

(I probably would not have met this wonderful book if it were not for Netgalley, so thank you thank you for the arc. and thank you to past me too for requesting it. i make excellent decisions)

I DNF’d this book at about 85% because the plot totally lost me. What starts out as a story of a woman with an eating disorder and wondering what might happen to her, turned into a sort of crime novel. It didn’t work for me after we leave Jane’s POV.

What a peculiar little book! Swallow the Ghost is a three part book with completely different styles of writing and three very different stories-threaded together by Jane. Jane is a writer just trying to make it through her odd little life, starting each day with a cold cup of water. The characters that interact with Jane throughout this book remind me of my friends: just absolutely peculiar but desperate to live a good life in spite of being looked at funny by the “normals.” It’s hard to really describe what this book is and how it works, so my best suggestion is just to read it and find out for yourself! I think it will be a book that will haunt me much longer than I expect.

This started off really well up to the shocking end of the first story. The second story showed promise and then everything started to unravel and nothing really made sense afterwards. The third story completely lost me. Maybe it's me but nothing really came full circle.

Jane Murphy works in a social media marketing startup where she helped writer Jeremy Miller rise to stardom as she concocted a viral internet novel that has gained many followers.
Trapped in her obsessive disorders, she keeps all her quirks hidden from Jeremy as their work relationship grows into something more.
Suddenly, everything changes and tragedy strikes, leaving everyone wondering if they really knew Jane at all.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style in this novel. I understand the compulsion and routines Jane follows, but it became very repetitive and made me skip ahead at times. It had a lot of promise but quickly changed into a whodunit style that I felt went nowhere and dragged out a little too long.

Overall, this novel was an ok read. I recommend this to readers who love a good mystery and unique perspectives throughout a story.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book wasn't quite what I expected and I was so pleasantly surprised by the concept of this literary mystery. I thought the unique storytelling devices used in each of the three parts were done very well and were very true to the story. I would highly recommend this book!

This was a very unique concept which was what interested me in picking up the book. At first I was confused because I found the writing of Jane's character to not be well developed, but it took me a while to realize that this was intentional. I did not enjoy Jane's POV because of this. Jane was scattered and the story plot seemed to time jump without any transition. Once I muscled through Jane's character to Jesse was when I really started enjoying this book. Jesse seemed like a well rounded character, and I was able to connect with him by getting his background of taking care of his mother and going to college for a career that he didn't end up working in. I found Jeremy's POV to be boring, especially with one lengthy interview about nonsense things he was writing but couldn't finish that may or may not had something to do with Jane. It felt like I didn't get a resolution for any of the characters and that was frustrating. I call this a unique book because by the end it seemed like Jeremy had wrote the character of Jane but did not finish this writing either and that is why Jane's character was the way it was. Once I got that at almost the end of the book, I could enjoy the writing, but I wish I got some tidbits of that throughout the book so I could understand that sooner. I like to read stories that I have never read before, and I will say this is one of them. This author took a risk with this writing style and to wait until the very end to make sense of the whole story, I think this may be a book that people will either get, or they won't, and maybe I just don't get it.

This is a tough one to review for me. The book is clearly divided into three parts, three voices. I absolutely loved the first part: the repetition of the character's days, the lens through which she saw the world, the way her work and life were entangled, her relationships and her struggles. You know when you're reading a book and you just fall into it and are fully absorbed? Part one was like that for me. I couldn't put it down. The second part, I enjoyed but felt a little weighed down by it, maybe because I missed Jane's voice so much. There was nothing wrong with it, and I liked all the unravelling of the mystery, but I didn't connect with the character as much as in the first and it felt like it dragged for that reason. The third threw me off because I strongly disliked the character, kind of like if you're out with a group of friends and you're all having. an interesting conversation and then he comes in and talks over everyone else with a version of the story that feels overly dramatized and egocentric and shuts out everyone listening, like a performance that no one asked for. A little eye-rolly? I'll be honest and say I skimmed a lot of it, and in skimming, probably missed the twist if there was one, and I thought there might be, but I couldn't stay in it. I was so deeply into it and then I wasn't, but it's worth reading if only for the magic of Part One, which is such strong, good writing and such a real character brought to life by the alchemy of good writing, the use of repetition and knowing when to stop and leave the reader wanting more.

I keep going back and forth on this one: it was super compelling, and very uniquely written, and I liked it a lot, except it's annoying to write a murder mystery that's never solved. Like, come on, that is objectively annoying even if the truth is ~not the point~. At the end of the day I respect the experimentation here and I'll keep thinking about this book not only for annoyance reasons - so let's cut it down the middle at three stars.

My thanks to Mulholland Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

I think that Eugenie Montague's "Swallow This Ghost" is going to stick with me for awhile. A very smart genre defying novel that almost feels like multiple books with its shifts. A singular event occurs that shapes 3 lives in totally different ways.
For starters, within the story we have what may be one of the most brilliant ideas ever for marketing a new novel. I was intrigued and could absolutely see an author or publisher using social media the way it is done within these pages. Jane, the marketing company she works for, are working with Jeremy, using different characters from his novel to tell parts of the story via their own social media accounts, making it feel real and causing a viral sensation.
Montague is also very clever with showcasing the endless cycle of routine, and all the little secrets we hide in that. A lot of secrets for Jane, and what she hides from Jeremy as the line of professional and personal relationship blurs.
Tragedy strikes and the story takes a totally different turn and new perspective. I think I enjoyed this part of the book the most. I refuse to give anything away. Eventually this takes us to what I'll say is act 3 which, again, brilliant on Montagues part, in giving us yet another perspective on what happened, and the aftermath of it all.
Ultimately for me, a sharply written examination on our public vs private lives and how what we reveal in them changes everyone's perspectives of us.

mixed feelings? i think this book is not particularly innovative, and yet there are aspects of it that I appreciate. The first two parts read like a true crime podcast and the third part (which is actually a podcast) sort of wraps up the loose ends from the first two parts. each part is written in a different character's perspective and the author does a really good job at differentiating between the characters, it's pretty impressive that they were able to write in three distinct narrative voices without conflating them.

there were some lovely lines in there about grief and the ways people come to terms with things that happen to them and around them but it didn't feel like this book had anything to say that hadn't already been said before. I did almost give up because the first part was just not particularly interesting... but it's possible that was because i forgot what the book was about before i started reading since it had been a while since i picked it up. the third part was my favorite so it's worth it to stick around

I was not sure what to expect going into this, but was pleasantly surprised. This book is told in three parts. The first part was my favorite. I loved the detached writing style and the beautiful prose. I loved the main character, Jane, and connected with her quickly. The repetitiveness added to the eerie and unsettling vibe that the detached style was giving off.

The second part started off shocking. The jolt from third person to first person narration was a jarring switch. The new character, Jesse, slowly grew on me, although some of his actions were confusing or frustrating. I loved seeing Jane’s life from another angle, and it was interesting to have different opinions on some characters when seen from Jesse’s lens vs Jane’s lens.

The third part was my least favorite, and the reason I am rating the novel 4 stars instead of 5. I found it to drag a bit, and the writing style didn’t speak to me or draw me in as much as in the first two parts. This section centers around Jeremy, who was my least favorite character. I felt like the reader is left unsatisfied with the tragedy/mystery, which I didn’t like, and slowly realizes that each narrator has been unreliable to a degree, which I did like. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will be thinking about this one for a while!

Thank you to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love when a book surprises me. But what I love most is reading a book and realizing that I have no idea how it will end.

Most of the time I am reviewing books that I loved but knew what was going to happen pretty early on. Swallow the Ghost is nothing like that!

Suffice to say, the less you know, the more enjoyable it will be. What you can know now is that Jane is a millennial, working at a social media marketing company. Her current client Jeremy has written a novel that she is helping build buzz through online story. Jane is excited by the work but also bored by her life, her daily routines, her compulsions. Enter a potential love interest and a detective of sort.
This is like no book I have ever read and I can't wait to hear what you think!

My one gripe is the end was focused on my least favorite person in the book and I am just not sure why. Read this book!
.#mullhollandbooks #swallowtheghost #eugeniemontague

"Swallow the Ghost" by Eugenie Montague is difficult to summarize! In fact, I feel like if I tried to, it would give away too much. One of the most rewarding things about this novel was the shock and surprise. This is one of those books where its best to go into it knowing nothing.

Here's what I can say: The novel’s narrative structure is notably distinct, divided into three parts, each shifting in point of view and storytelling medium. Of these, the middle section, with its detective mystery style, resonated most conventionally with me, offering a more familiar narrative rhythm. There were many insights in this novel that I found super interesting.

The first part, characterized by its repetitive nature ended up being really intriguing to me, and I was excited to see where it would go. I felt excited to learn more about Jane, to be privy to her mystery. For example, I was super interested & intrigued by her sense of wrongness when she wakes up each morning: “But she had woken up with the feeling that something was wrong, that she had done something wrong. She waits for the shame to loose its hold on her, to realize it belonged to some dream, but then she remembers, and the dread she perceived, which felt like a heavy but lifeless presence, transforms into something restless and grasping.” Ultimately, I wanted this to be explored more, or understand how it connected to the rest of the novel but was kind of let down. Or perhaps it was, but was just lost on me.

The novel's overall structure was ambitious. I was hoping for more of a sense of resolution at the end, but we didn't get that. Perhaps this was done on purpose, but given that the novel was already experimental, I think it should have offered a little more resolution at the end for us curious, and maybe less literary readers. Nonetheless, Montague’s evident potential as a writer keeps me hopeful and interested in her future works, as "Swallow the Ghost" feels like a stepping stone in her journey to finding her unique voice.

Here are some of my favorite insights/quotes from the novel (not spoilers):

“There’s something about reading that opens the portal between the worlds — possibly because to write the book in the first place, someone from this world had access to that world.”

“When a writer has blind spots in fiction, it could be a blind spot in real life.”

“How many moments never make a memory? How many moments do people live through together that are experienced so differently by each of them, its almost like they didn’t experience something together at all."

Thanks to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the ARC.

This one wasn't really for me. Not a bad book at all, just not for me. The premise and the way it's set up was interesting to me. The book is broken into three parts, from three different POVs. I didn't feel connected enough to the character in the first part, which made it hard to care for parts two-three.

Part three of the book was also kind of a letdown as I was expecting more of a resolution. It wasn't at all the ending I was expecting. Part three felt like a whining, pretentious diary entry.

Still an interesting book about how we portray ourselves online vs. real life.

Swallow the Ghost is a uniquely told murder mystery from the perspective of three central characters in three different sections. The first half had me hooked, particularly the jarring beginning to part 2. The story lulls a bit from there though, and it never quite recovered for me. Each character is dealing with their own personal issues amidst the overarching plot and it felt like both too much and not enough at the same time. I was hoping for a satisfying ending that would make the lulls feel worth it but there was very little closure. I would have loved part 3 to be from either Kaya or Tom’s point of view. But alas we hear from the least interesting character describing in the most pretentious terms how his life was affected by this tragedy.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

First off thank you to the publisher and net galley for the chance to read this advance copy. This book is told in three parts. Each part is a different character and at a different point in the story. This makes it quite unique. But I wasn’t feeling the final part with Jeremy. It was a change in the flow up to that point and I wasn’t as big of a fan. I found myself trying to get through it more than reading it deeply. This was a quick read overall. A good who did it storyline, that kept you thinking it was this person or that person. But overall it left a lot of empty spaces for me. Things that just didn’t get closure in the story and areas that didn’t have as much detail as I would have liked. It wasn’t bad by any means, just not a book that will top my list.

I found the premise of this novel very compelling and I enjoyed the concept of writing a fictional story entirely through social media, but I don't think this worked perfectly for me. I enjoyed the writing style of the first section, it is very clever and really makes you feel like you are inside Jane's mind. However, I think it becomes a bit too repetitive, which made it drag for me. The second section was the most interesting and I was kept at the edge wanting to solve this mystery, but the ball didn't drop and I genuinely am not sure if it was solved. I did not connect with the last part and it was hard for me to follow. Overall, the sections felt a little too disconnected for me and I had trouble making sense of the plot.