Birdie Chang runs to Whidbey Island to escape the man who abused her as a child when a stranger on the ferry offers her something unexpected: revenge.

When her abuser is suddenly murdered, Birdie discovers she isn’t the only survivor of his past. A reality TV star’s memoir, an abuser’s grieving mother and a growing investigation begin to collide.

As secrets unravel, the question becomes less about who killed Calvin and more about who gets to tell the story.

This is everything I've ever wanted in a book. It rattled me. It threw me into a tizzy. It squeezed me like the most violent hug.

Mixing reality with fantastical fiction, the world that Madden created had me gasping for air and fighting sleep. The characters were captivating and nuanced and so so realistic. The emotions on each page had me wishing my mind could digest things quicker while simultaneously wanting to relish every word.

I really liked the alternate POVs giving us insight into the mother of the abuser. For me, that offered a unique perspective into how a parent may rationalize and navigate something so horrible. How they begin to process and move through the world viewing themselves as the victim of sorts, unable to understand what their position in all of this really is.

The sex scenes are the most authentically written queer sex scenes I've personally read. a reminder of the power of being able to see ourselves represented in media.

The prose, the pain, the suffering, the nostalgia, the perfection of depth of the characters made me feel like I was living in this book.

*buying from these links give me a small commission and I really appreciate it :)

(5/5 stars)

As someone who lived in Seattle for years, I loved the references to the Unicorn Bar and other Capitol Hill staples like the Elliot Bay Bookstore.

Here is a photo of me from 2017 immediately post-op from surgery and waddling around with a catheter in but couldn’t pass up being at the Unicorn!!!!