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metaphorsandmisc's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Gaslighting, Child abuse, Bullying, Mental illness, Kidnapping, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Child death
Moderate: Sexual assault, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Violence
Minor: Car accident, Suicide, and Vomit
lexieellis13's review
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I have no words. This was my first full read of 2023 and it was just incredible. A sensational purview of trauma and the ways it alters the brain, as well as the range of ways trauma presents in different individuals. I simply cannot describe how the author’s way of writing made me feel like I was spinning around and falling with the main character. It was hard to tell who he was but also not difficult at all.
Incredible❤️
Incredible❤️
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Torture, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Kidnapping, Panic attacks/disorders, Abandonment, Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Mental illness, Violence, and Vomit
Moderate: Body shaming, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Car accident, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, Body horror, Child death, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Addiction, Alcohol, Classism, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Medical content, Murder, Rape, Sexual harassment, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Biphobia, Infidelity, and Fatphobia
bimenace's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Cursing, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Kidnapping, Bullying, Grief, Dysphoria, Domestic abuse, Toxic friendship, Suicide, Confinement, Suicidal thoughts, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Panic attacks/disorders, and Mental illness
Moderate: Classism, Sexual assault, Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Child death, Death, Violence, Vomit, Hate crime, Murder, Death of parent, and Drug use
Minor: Gun violence
aromarrie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
So . . . I just got your nine billion texts.
I'm sorry it took me so long to write back.
And just for the record.
I love you too.
for a good solid hour, i've been questioning to myself whether or not i should be really picky with my rating and give this story a 4.75 instead of the full 5-star but like, that quote above? it got to me in a way i don't think i can fully express in words (which feels like the case with all my recent reads as of late). because that quote, this story i just finished, got to me, it felt pretty stupid to pick over ratings when what the author did telling not just sayer's story but a lot of other characters...it was so absolutely heartbreaking.
for the record, reading this story was huge for me because this isn't my first robin roe novel. i actually read her debut work, a list of cages, back in 2020 and it was equally as heartbreaking but executed a little differently. for that story, i gave it 3 stars, but the memory of my feelings while reading the book are as clear as ever; and for me, it took a big toll on me. i think what made 2020 me so picky was just the writing, because it's also a bridge to gap with this story as well, and i worry other readers will face the same bridge and give up both books before actually seeing it for what it is. i can't completely speak about my thoughts of a list of cages (there was a review i felt compelled to write for the book despite the fact that around that time, i didn't write reviews as consistently as i do now), because it's just been quite a while since i picked it up, but for this story, i can speak as much of my thoughts as i can.
the writing in this, especially from the beginning, was as if the author was playing a psychological mindgame with the reader. this story can be said to have been split into three parts--sayers before he was kidnapped, sayer during his time with his kidnapper, and sayers after, who just barely makes it. i think the fact that the author explored all these different important stages of the story was absolutely stellar and it all amassed a huge wave of respect for her as a writer because it certainly wasn't easy. there was something so . . . monotonous about the first stage; we got to see the way sayers lived his normal rich teenage life with his big circle of friends and adoring girlfriend. we got to see moments while he was in school and taking bits & scraps from his lessons, moments where he just felt so empty. he had to have been one of the most apathetic characters i've ever read because all the horrible things he sees & hears and it's like his mind's just completely checked out, and has been since the beginning.
there's no confirmation of why exactly sayers' family is so huge, why saying his name alone can let him get away with anything, but it's something that's laid on thick and you could think it like how it is when someone mindlessly uses applepay for their purchases, all because there's that false sense of security of that endless well of money that a quick tap of your phone can buy. once there's eventually a limit, though, a crisis occurs, and the moment sayers gets kidnapped, it's messed up as hell how it felt like that was the first genuine reaction i got from him. before then, there were brief instances that revealed parts of him that would make later events in the story feel really significant; for example, the close relationship he shares with his mother, who even in all his apathy, he acknowledges the memories he holds of her where she had always been his closest best friend. there's also some moments in school where his mind seems to perk up when he's in his AP Latin class, the only student in the room who's actually very skilled & enamoured with studying languages. to him, it's like a code, one that once unlocked, will unveil a whole space of knowledge that was at an impasse before but now sweeps itself before him.
seeing those brief flares of light is what's recalled during his time in captivity, and what once felt like tortuous recounts of his monotonous daily life slowly turns itself into a dark & messy tangle that leaves sayers unable to recall what felt real and what was simply fabricated for the sake of his imagination. it made my stomach sink to see his time with his captive as it felt just as monotonous but with a deeply unsettling factor as sayers tries to figure out a way to escape, only in the next minute, to feel confused about what he's trying to accomplish. the moments with his captor were hard to read, not simply because this was a man who kidnapped this teenage kid, but also because he's revealed to be a grieving father searching for his missing son and just as the mc feels like he's stuck on this constant loop of simply existing, this man is, too.
it was the flashes of raw grief and sorrow that threw me off, because here was this broken man who was hurting sayers but then who also sometimes made sayers feel these kernels of joy. the fact that it's established early on in the book that sayers' dad is pretty much a deadbeat didn't make this any less crushing, as it was obvious how that could maybe have affected sayers' feelings regarding the soft ways his captor treated him, despite some godawful scenes of punishment & neglect, vs. a biological dad who genuinely could not give a fuck. back to the captor, though, when i mention how harrowing it was to see his feelings be laid out bare despite the obscene level of trauma he's given our main character, it really did have an affect on me, and here's one quote that was it for me:
"If I could still see the people I've lost, it wouldn't be so hard. If I could just see their faces, even if they couldn't talk to me, I could survive it. But it was knowing they were underground and I could never look at them again . . . That's the thing I can't take."
so yeah, there's just one quote of many that made me go very quiet as i was frantically turning the pages of my ebook to see sayers' story through to the bittersweet end. the moments in his captivity were a whirlwind of mixed feelings with a sinking stomach as i watched the way sayers' mind warped itself and constantly shifted back & forth from two pasts and two presents. the sayers we barely knew from the first part of the story was blurring his faded memories with another boy who he's confused to be, and it creates such a mess of contradictions because it gets to a point where even as the reader, even as someone who could easily turn back to whatever page i need to to refresh my memory, i questioned myself on what memories of sayers' were his own and which details were fabricated and which others weren't. i got things mixed up, and that left me feeling a little shaken because i had thought that with how simple & straightforward the writing was in the beginning, the details would be hard to miss but it all just became one blur in this traumatic experience sayers is put through, playing the role of a son of a grieving father only then to seem to turn into that very boy as if like a flickering image finally come to life.
there's a certain twist in the story that pauses the flickering picture, definitely causing both the reader and sayers' thoughts to spin, and in that brief respite, it added a whole other layer of intrigue but also just pure sadness because the dark stuff that happens in this book--moments of starvation, being pushed so far into a dark room with no sources of light it's as if the character is wading through an empty veil of space, short but fiery bouts of anger that leads to harsh slaps and then gentle hands caressing cheeks--all of it was just....god. speaking of G-d, there is some religious talk in this story and the way the author executed it had a pretty big impact on me because i'm like one of the characters, evan, in here when i say i feel as if i'm neither atheist nor religious, not even agnostic--i'm just...here, processing what's going on around me but briefly fascinated by the ideas of what lies out there. i think ultimately in sayers' case, it mattered a lot to him to ask certain questions regarding not just finding faith in an unseen figure but also the actual stories that are spoken of from the Bible.
one of the biggest things for me, personally, was seeing how sayers got to try to find a way back to himself, if there even was a him from before, because again, his days from before were just so boring and felt so empty, so what was there to return back to? actually quite a bit, but it's hard for sayers to reckon with what parts of him feel right to keep and what others just altogether seem so foreign to him because it always had been. just as that captor had done, but maybe much differently when peering through the eyes of a teenage boy, sayers had been a part of some terrible things, and while he never directly laid a hand or said a cruel line out of pure maliciousness, he was part of what kept the scales unbalanced and more in favor of the predator's side vs. the kids who were preyed on. in the after, these kids react in different ways to sayers and the way they react is a bit of a tough read but it's necessary, and it's something sayers has to face, among a lot of other things.
i think the relationships he has in his life, some superficial and others so incredibly deep & powerful, with a few lying in the between, is one of the most of profound things i gleaned from the story. because characters like evan and penny have faced such huge traumatic events, as sayers has, but their pain & grief are for them & them alone, and seeing the way they become a fixure in sayers' life wasn't something i was fully prepared with but then turned into something huge to me. other characters, such as sayers' mom and his best friend luke, they have a presence in the story that nearing the end most especially, i was hit with a huge wave of emotion because they were a part of sayers' before, and then we see them in the after, and there's a piece missing--a piece hard to uncover because we only saw traces of them during, and having that kind of trouble was just....its own fracture in my heart. i wish i could've seen a little more of luke because in the before, he seemed so bright and excitable, but then in the after, there were so many layers that were hard to uncover in the walls he built around himself after facing the grief & guilt of a missing best friend, one he's spent his entire life with. one particular message absolutely crushed me, but i'll leave that for the highlights, because like most things are, and i'm probably repeating myself here, it was a lot.
this story was very challenging and hard to read at times but it was so important, and i felt so connected to a character who at just one point, barely seemed to be even there, and yet here he is, and the edges are still a bit blurry, but significant details are coming into focus. there's sayers' love of languages, there's the relationships to the people he holds close, there's the shell of him that's trying to heal not just from the traumatic experience he's been through but also the emptiness of before, not realizing until after how there's only small pieces of his entire life that feel genuine in his memory, and not something that occurred just for the sake of it. i feel like, or at least i just hope, that sayers' character will resonate a lot with some readers. i hope just as much that other characters and their traumas have as equal of an impact of others' reading experiences because despite us not directly being in their heads and seeing for ourselves how twisted their minds could've gotten, they each have a strong foothold in this story that is impossible to ignore.
psychology is a subject teased at with all its stereotypes of those who study it, but i'm deeply glad for & proud of the author for turning to this field, and exploring stories that on the surface might not have the most appealing writing but once delved deeper into, there's a purpose and pride to it that leaves you shaken. i loved this story, and i love to think that sayers and evan and penny and blair and luke and sayers' mom and just everyone will be able to look in the mirror and recognize themselves rather than feeling like ghosts. hopefully one day.
I'm sorry it took me so long to write back.
And just for the record.
I love you too.
for a good solid hour, i've been questioning to myself whether or not i should be really picky with my rating and give this story a 4.75 instead of the full 5-star but like, that quote above? it got to me in a way i don't think i can fully express in words (which feels like the case with all my recent reads as of late). because that quote, this story i just finished, got to me, it felt pretty stupid to pick over ratings when what the author did telling not just sayer's story but a lot of other characters...it was so absolutely heartbreaking.
for the record, reading this story was huge for me because this isn't my first robin roe novel. i actually read her debut work, a list of cages, back in 2020 and it was equally as heartbreaking but executed a little differently. for that story, i gave it 3 stars, but the memory of my feelings while reading the book are as clear as ever; and for me, it took a big toll on me. i think what made 2020 me so picky was just the writing, because it's also a bridge to gap with this story as well, and i worry other readers will face the same bridge and give up both books before actually seeing it for what it is. i can't completely speak about my thoughts of a list of cages (there was a review i felt compelled to write for the book despite the fact that around that time, i didn't write reviews as consistently as i do now), because it's just been quite a while since i picked it up, but for this story, i can speak as much of my thoughts as i can.
the writing in this, especially from the beginning, was as if the author was playing a psychological mindgame with the reader. this story can be said to have been split into three parts--sayers before he was kidnapped, sayer during his time with his kidnapper, and sayers after, who just barely makes it. i think the fact that the author explored all these different important stages of the story was absolutely stellar and it all amassed a huge wave of respect for her as a writer because it certainly wasn't easy. there was something so . . . monotonous about the first stage; we got to see the way sayers lived his normal rich teenage life with his big circle of friends and adoring girlfriend. we got to see moments while he was in school and taking bits & scraps from his lessons, moments where he just felt so empty. he had to have been one of the most apathetic characters i've ever read because all the horrible things he sees & hears and it's like his mind's just completely checked out, and has been since the beginning.
there's no confirmation of why exactly sayers' family is so huge, why saying his name alone can let him get away with anything, but it's something that's laid on thick and you could think it like how it is when someone mindlessly uses applepay for their purchases, all because there's that false sense of security of that endless well of money that a quick tap of your phone can buy. once there's eventually a limit, though, a crisis occurs, and the moment sayers gets kidnapped, it's messed up as hell how it felt like that was the first genuine reaction i got from him. before then, there were brief instances that revealed parts of him that would make later events in the story feel really significant; for example, the close relationship he shares with his mother, who even in all his apathy, he acknowledges the memories he holds of her where she had always been his closest best friend. there's also some moments in school where his mind seems to perk up when he's in his AP Latin class, the only student in the room who's actually very skilled & enamoured with studying languages. to him, it's like a code, one that once unlocked, will unveil a whole space of knowledge that was at an impasse before but now sweeps itself before him.
seeing those brief flares of light is what's recalled during his time in captivity, and what once felt like tortuous recounts of his monotonous daily life slowly turns itself into a dark & messy tangle that leaves sayers unable to recall what felt real and what was simply fabricated for the sake of his imagination. it made my stomach sink to see his time with his captive as it felt just as monotonous but with a deeply unsettling factor as sayers tries to figure out a way to escape, only in the next minute, to feel confused about what he's trying to accomplish. the moments with his captor were hard to read, not simply because this was a man who kidnapped this teenage kid, but also because he's revealed to be a grieving father searching for his missing son and just as the mc feels like he's stuck on this constant loop of simply existing, this man is, too.
it was the flashes of raw grief and sorrow that threw me off, because here was this broken man who was hurting sayers but then who also sometimes made sayers feel these kernels of joy. the fact that it's established early on in the book that sayers' dad is pretty much a deadbeat didn't make this any less crushing, as it was obvious how that could maybe have affected sayers' feelings regarding the soft ways his captor treated him, despite some godawful scenes of punishment & neglect, vs. a biological dad who genuinely could not give a fuck. back to the captor, though, when i mention how harrowing it was to see his feelings be laid out bare despite the obscene level of trauma he's given our main character, it really did have an affect on me, and here's one quote that was it for me:
"If I could still see the people I've lost, it wouldn't be so hard. If I could just see their faces, even if they couldn't talk to me, I could survive it. But it was knowing they were underground and I could never look at them again . . . That's the thing I can't take."
so yeah, there's just one quote of many that made me go very quiet as i was frantically turning the pages of my ebook to see sayers' story through to the bittersweet end. the moments in his captivity were a whirlwind of mixed feelings with a sinking stomach as i watched the way sayers' mind warped itself and constantly shifted back & forth from two pasts and two presents. the sayers we barely knew from the first part of the story was blurring his faded memories with another boy who he's confused to be, and it creates such a mess of contradictions because it gets to a point where even as the reader, even as someone who could easily turn back to whatever page i need to to refresh my memory, i questioned myself on what memories of sayers' were his own and which details were fabricated and which others weren't. i got things mixed up, and that left me feeling a little shaken because i had thought that with how simple & straightforward the writing was in the beginning, the details would be hard to miss but it all just became one blur in this traumatic experience sayers is put through, playing the role of a son of a grieving father only then to seem to turn into that very boy as if like a flickering image finally come to life.
there's a certain twist in the story that pauses the flickering picture, definitely causing both the reader and sayers' thoughts to spin, and in that brief respite, it added a whole other layer of intrigue but also just pure sadness because the dark stuff that happens in this book--moments of starvation, being pushed so far into a dark room with no sources of light it's as if the character is wading through an empty veil of space, short but fiery bouts of anger that leads to harsh slaps and then gentle hands caressing cheeks--all of it was just....god. speaking of G-d, there is some religious talk in this story and the way the author executed it had a pretty big impact on me because i'm like one of the characters, evan, in here when i say i feel as if i'm neither atheist nor religious, not even agnostic--i'm just...here, processing what's going on around me but briefly fascinated by the ideas of what lies out there. i think ultimately in sayers' case, it mattered a lot to him to ask certain questions regarding not just finding faith in an unseen figure but also the actual stories that are spoken of from the Bible.
one of the biggest things for me, personally, was seeing how sayers got to try to find a way back to himself, if there even was a him from before, because again, his days from before were just so boring and felt so empty, so what was there to return back to? actually quite a bit, but it's hard for sayers to reckon with what parts of him feel right to keep and what others just altogether seem so foreign to him because it always had been. just as that captor had done, but maybe much differently when peering through the eyes of a teenage boy, sayers had been a part of some terrible things, and while he never directly laid a hand or said a cruel line out of pure maliciousness, he was part of what kept the scales unbalanced and more in favor of the predator's side vs. the kids who were preyed on. in the after, these kids react in different ways to sayers and the way they react is a bit of a tough read but it's necessary, and it's something sayers has to face, among a lot of other things.
i think the relationships he has in his life, some superficial and others so incredibly deep & powerful, with a few lying in the between, is one of the most of profound things i gleaned from the story. because characters like evan and penny have faced such huge traumatic events, as sayers has, but their pain & grief are for them & them alone, and seeing the way they become a fixure in sayers' life wasn't something i was fully prepared with but then turned into something huge to me. other characters, such as sayers' mom and his best friend luke, they have a presence in the story that nearing the end most especially, i was hit with a huge wave of emotion because they were a part of sayers' before, and then we see them in the after, and there's a piece missing--a piece hard to uncover because we only saw traces of them during, and having that kind of trouble was just....its own fracture in my heart. i wish i could've seen a little more of luke because in the before, he seemed so bright and excitable, but then in the after, there were so many layers that were hard to uncover in the walls he built around himself after facing the grief & guilt of a missing best friend, one he's spent his entire life with. one particular message absolutely crushed me, but i'll leave that for the highlights, because like most things are, and i'm probably repeating myself here, it was a lot.
this story was very challenging and hard to read at times but it was so important, and i felt so connected to a character who at just one point, barely seemed to be even there, and yet here he is, and the edges are still a bit blurry, but significant details are coming into focus. there's sayers' love of languages, there's the relationships to the people he holds close, there's the shell of him that's trying to heal not just from the traumatic experience he's been through but also the emptiness of before, not realizing until after how there's only small pieces of his entire life that feel genuine in his memory, and not something that occurred just for the sake of it. i feel like, or at least i just hope, that sayers' character will resonate a lot with some readers. i hope just as much that other characters and their traumas have as equal of an impact of others' reading experiences because despite us not directly being in their heads and seeing for ourselves how twisted their minds could've gotten, they each have a strong foothold in this story that is impossible to ignore.
psychology is a subject teased at with all its stereotypes of those who study it, but i'm deeply glad for & proud of the author for turning to this field, and exploring stories that on the surface might not have the most appealing writing but once delved deeper into, there's a purpose and pride to it that leaves you shaken. i loved this story, and i love to think that sayers and evan and penny and blair and luke and sayers' mom and just everyone will be able to look in the mirror and recognize themselves rather than feeling like ghosts. hopefully one day.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Kidnapping
Moderate: Bullying, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, and Vomit
Minor: Sexual assault
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