4.11 AVERAGE

dark sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This was such a unique way to tell a story of a serial killer and I really liked it. It was a little slow at parts, but overall I would highly recommend.

Guess who decided to make the huge mistake of reading the last few chapters in a public place.
dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark emotional reflective sad
dark mysterious sad fast-paced

The ending was rushed. It could’ve been so much better. 
dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

The writing of this book was great. It makes you question things about your own morality. I don’t want to feel for him. I don’t want to see all those little pieces that make him human (the yearning hidden underneath all the hatred, shifted blame and misogyny). It makes you see for a mere second in between that he is not the monster underneath your bed. He is just an ordinary, traumatised man whose doings are evil. And still: He can not find redemption. He must not find redemption.

But for his sake I do wish that in another life he was adopted with his brother. In another life I hope he didn’t hear the screams. In another life I hope he got the help he needed. That the victims got to lead warm, safe, beautiful lives.

It‘s his theory, in the end. That we are all neither good nor bad. That there are infinite ways our lives could have gone and that those lives exist, somewhere, maybe.

Utterly sad is all this is. How this boy was formed in his mother‘s unknowing womb, born in a barn and the first hands that held him are ones that hurt, hurt, HURT. To be in the foster care system, so utterly out of place. To never really belong.

I feel with the boy. I don’t feel with the murderer. But the murderer was the boy. The boy is still inside of the murderer, buried somewhere. How can we dissect one from the other?

We can’t. Not really.

Like Saffy, we „expected to feel hurt, or rage, or hate“ (…) „But there was only a lagging sort of pity.“

In the end it boils down to this: “Ansel was no evil genius. He did not even seem particularly smart. From across the table, the brilliant psychopath she'd hounded all these years looked to Saffy like an unremarkable man, aging and apathetic, bloated and dull. Some men, Saffy knew, killed from a place of anger. Others killed from humiliation, or hatred, or depraved sexual need. Ansel was not rare or mystifying. He was the least nuanced of them all, a murky combination of all the above. A small and boring man who killed because he felt like it.“

3.5/5