grizelybear 's review for:

Below by Laurel Hightower

3.0

dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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It's... fine? The story started strong and built a great tense environment, but it just became a weird mess around the last three to four chapters (and I like weird, but this was not a good kind of weird). I thought the take on mothman's abilities was interesting, but I just can't help but think that its speech near the end was kind of goofy and really killed the vibes. I'm sure the author could have figured out a way to make the overall message of the story clear without spelling it out for us like a cartoonish, monologuing murder mystery final boss. A lot of the seemingly important events didn't really go anywhere either, which is a bummer.

I like the overarching theme and I liked Addy as a protagonist and related to her, but the story just unfortunately didn't click for me.