At some points, the storytelling lacks cohesion/enough context to explain what we as the audience are seeing as the narration shifts away from Nate to that of the urban legends and hiding boy. It also gets hard to follow when Nate slips in and out of reality. The narrator difference to denote the changing of characters is clear, but more than once I found myself rewinding the audiobook to see if I'd missed something in terms of content. There is some framework for suspense and horror throughout the novel, but it only started really building at around the 70% mark. Nate is a weird guy, but his palpable anxiety, combined with the unspoken horrors behind his actions make the payoff for the last 30% more impactful. Max is an amazing character and her friendship with Henry is one of my favorite parts of the book. Max, Seb, and Tyler are all interesting characters and really nice people. The strength of this book really is its characters.

The secondary twist of Hazel's boyfriend being dead was heartbreaking. The long phone calls were her listening to his voice on the answering machine over and over. She was a part of the crimes they were committing, but she also became a victim, as Rowan became a monster. Seb's death with his brother by his side, especially after he bonded with Nate, broke me. I'm glad Tyler and Max made it out, and I'm glad the hiding boy and the last house followed Nate and his family after what they did. A good revenge against a monster is to make sure they're never free, and  that's what the narrative did. A story about people being punished for doing the right thing is a really interesting concept, and I think Vincent Ralph did it justice.

This is definitely a book for a young adult audience, but it was written with precision and intention in the characters and their relationships.