Summary

Imperfect but impressive debut. A bit too tidy, a bit too late. Read fast to get to the end, but good language as well. Interesting parallels between this character and Jessica Jones (she wrote while on hiatus from the show).

Notes

I swore, many times, that I would never go home. But now I know better. Any self-help book in the world will tell you that you can’t just run your past away. Barrens has its roots in me. If I want it gone forever, I’ll have to cut them out myself.

Yellow highlight | Location: 535

But I have forgotten this: you can’t go anywhere in this town without running into someone. It’s one of the first things you shed in a city, the feeling of being watched, observed, and noticed; the feeling of racketing like a pinball between familiar people and places, and no way to get out. First Misha, and now…

Yellow highlight | Location: 552

He wasn’t popular, but he wasn’t unpopular, either. He lived outside the system. Even the stories about him got refracted and rounded off, bounced back to us before they’d had a chance to solidify. Brent O’Connell and his friends supposedly went to Condor’s house and beat the shit out of him. Was it something he did to Kaycee? Or tried to do? It was after Becky Sarinelli died, I know that. And I remember, too, that Condor and Becky Sarinelli were friends.

Yellow highlight | Location: 571

“You don’t have to.” I reach for the bag, and as my hand makes contact with his, something passes between us, a quick transfer of chemistry and heat. That’s the whole problem with instincts: they’re all fucking wrong.

Yellow highlight | Location: 586

Still, the house seems to rush toward me and not the other way around. Like it’s eager to get me inside. Like it’s been waiting.

Yellow highlight | Location: 622

everything he did was okay, because he’d “found the Lord.” In town, he wore his religion like armor, and somehow that kept him untouchable. At home, he wielded it like a weapon.

Yellow highlight | Location: 917

For a second, he falters. When he adjusts his position, the vinyl squeaks faintly again, like the sound of a new shoe. “Teenagers can be real assholes. I know we were. I know I was.

Yellow highlight | Location: 993

Survival instinct—that deep, anxious burn I practically subsisted on in high school—shoots adrenaline through my veins.

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,580

Even when we were little, she had that gift: she could study something I’d seen every day, take it apart and make it new. I labored over line drawings while she made flowers ripple on the page. She spent hours one day in the sun drawing the same enormous mushroom, over and over, until she was satisfied she’d got it right. When she asked if I liked it, I asked her to show me the actual mushroom she’d been staring at all day, but there wasn’t one. Just a scattering of shattered beer bottles in the middle of the field.

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,431

else. Eventually, the stream of traffic onto County Route 12 slows to a dribble and the parking lot clears out. But the kids remain, disrupting the quiet with a Morse code of teenage shouting and laughter.

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,630

had been my fault all along. Nothing was ever her fault. She was immune to guilt, and her memory worked like one of those old gold sifting pans, shaking away all the dirt, all the bad stuff, leaving intact only the things she really wanted to remember, the things that made her look good.