4.98k reviews for:

This Thing Between Us

Gus Moreno

3.8 AVERAGE

goblin_novels1's review

4.5

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This was creepy, tingle up your spine, look over your shoulder at the Alexa, and dig your hands into the grave of Mexican folk lore, good 

nerdybookworm23's review

2.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gore

heerzhere's review

3.0

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Such good writing - but the story lost me. Was not what I was expecting and I didn’t understand the ending completely. Maybe I was expecting more of a hero ending - not sure, but I am left confused.

First half of the book slapped. When he moved it went downhill - not the horror / thriller i was expecting.

esterie's review against another edition

3.0

emotional mysterious fast-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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ok first off, absolutely beautiful prose involving grief. it was a series of visceral gut punches and made my heart ache. how unfortunate it was in my most disappointing read of the year :/

some creepy moments, like

the itza triggering parts of a song or movie quotes that mirror the events that are happening

, but, like 85% of this book was observing a piece of well constructed art, while the last bit felt as tangible as sand falling through my fingers. it's not that i don't ~get~ it, it's that it wasn't executed well and the antagonists motivations were needlessly obfuscated via the text. it feels like the puzzle pieces were laid out early on, but the connections didn't really come to pass nor fit together well. i was waiting for something to tie it all together and then it just.... ended. once the "dentist vision" happened it lost me. the reveal of

thiago turning off the alarm

made me gasp, but the reveal that he

was the one who called the killers name

fell flat due to timing and execution. bummer.

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I had no story to follow. My favorite character was gone.

I could feel your absence like a pulse running up and down the right side of my body where you were supposed to be sitting, your head on my shoulder.

She kept screaming into the phone, a sound that’s carved into my bones like grooves in a vinyl record.

I want to believe you never saw him, that you had your head down, because I don’t want to think his face was the last face you ever saw, that his eyes were the last you ever locked with, and it’s easier to think this because you fell so fully, not grasping on to anything, no tangling with this kid to bring him down with you. You fell like you were standing with your back to an in-ground pool and someone pushed you in.

I’m supposed to move on, get over it, let go. But it’s like having an arm amputated and complaining that you can still feel the phantom hand balled into a fist, and it hurts, and they all stare at me like monks in their Zen gardens, and say, “You have to let go.” To them, it’s a storm you weather, and if I just keep pushing through, I’ll come out the other side to a brighter day. A new day. Images of renewal and rebirth. Plant something and watch it grow. Except it doesn’t feel that way. No journey, no thing to endure. It feels like a corruption of genes. A double helix scrambled in a petri dish. A puppet forced to work on crossed strings. Those trees that manage to grow around power lines and stay mangled forever.

 

On some level I knew he didn’t intend to run into you. And if there’s a God, I hope he forgave him. Because the rest of me was stoking a fire at the core of my being. A subterranean room where the walls dripped orange globs of magma, and I pulled a blade out of a hearth fueled by my hate, forging it with every day I had to see Esteban’s face in the news, on my feed, anywhere.

The only thing that came close to capturing what life felt like with you dead was that a part of my physical body was gone now. Lopped off. There on the landing, I felt the throb of where the missing piece had fallen.

Your grave turned into a bookmark we couldn’t get past. That we kept going back to. You.

It meant sooner or later I was going to lose you again. No matter how deformed I felt, or how hobbled I was by your absence, with time I would develop the right callus to get on with life and you would slip into the background like a hand on someone’s leg that they feel less and less the longer it stays there.

The thought of you wouldn’t hurt as much as it did now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Your parents buried your body and my brain would bury your imprint on my life. I’d rather hole up in the cabin until the trial, the wall, the world forgot about me.

 

I already loved him, and it hurt so bad to love something with you gone because you couldn’t experience this love with me. How, if Brimley thought I was okay, he would have loved you.

The words collected on the other side of my teeth. The urge to tell her filled my throat, except I knew if I started talking the whole thread would undo me. And where would it start, with an apology? For being the one to wake up in the hospital bed instead of you?

 

michellebeth12's review

2.75

slow-paced

paulinehalia's review

4.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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An interesting read surrounding grief that kept me hooked the whole time, I was just mildly confused every step of the way

halokelly's review

1.0

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Why would you do that? Surely to fuck it’s rule number 1 that you don’t kill off ANY animal, especially a fucking dog. Don’t even care if this is a spoiler. SPOILER ALERT the book is shit.

Literally stopped reading at 49% because of this. Get fucked.

mimimimichi's review

3.75

emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

abby70q's review

4.0

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

marisowl's review

4.0

dark emotional 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

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This story left me heartbroken, scared, tense, sad and feeling uneasy, but it's so beautifully written, I loved it.