Keep

One chapter into this I knew I was going to have a difficult time reviewing this one, and now that I've finished it... I'm having a difficult time reviewing it.

At it's simplest, we have two adult cousins reconnecting after a very long time apart, with the context that one of them wronged the other in a singular event when they were both children. The instigator is kind of rudderless and looking to make amends with his cousin, who despite a rough adolescence seems to have inexplicably landed on his feet anyway. Straightforward enough.

But then we pull back to realize the story is being told by a prison inmate in a creative writing class who is desperate for the teacher's attention that he only sees once a week. So we're juggling back and forth between these two dudes dancing around the emotional landmines of their past in a literal abandoned castle, and also a guy trying to navigate a prison where he has more enemies than friends.

There's a lot of intentional ambiguity in this book, and loose supernatural events have an air about them where neither you nor the character experiencing them are really sure if it's actually happening or not. Not in a "gradual descent into madness" kind of way, but more of a flavoring of events around the central theme desiring connections with others. I do wish those brief eerie and spooky bits were more prevalent, but I respect that this wasn't that kind of book.

Not sure what kind of reader I'd recommend this to, but it definitely wasn't a simple nor predictable read.