What word is there for the way summer tastes, the accumulation of sunlight in the air like a head of sweet foam, the snap and fizz of fireworks, the heat that never relents?

What is this book?

The best book I've read this year. Possibly the best book I've read in the past five years. Perhaps the best book I've ever read.

I mentioned in my review of [b:Unteachable|20877902|Unteachable|Leah Raeder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1395677357l/20877902._SY75_.jpg|25207434] that Elliot Wake's style reminds me why I'm studying Literature. This whole book reminds me why I savage through decent book after decent book in search of the one that shows what written art should be like.

One thing that should be clear: [b:Black Iris|18829666|Black Iris|Elliot Wake|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420737066l/18829666._SY75_.jpg|26771709] is a very difficult book. It is extremely heavy, in the way literary fiction often is. There are so many layers to this story that I feel like I will be rereading it for the tenth time and will still notice something new. It's hard to explain without giving out spoilers, so I will just repeat: this is what written art should be like.

I bottle up my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes.

I must say that this book is not only heavy in the literary sense, but also theme-wise. Drugs, manipulation, unhealthy relationships, unhealthy lives, it is all there, tangled in such a way in a plot so carefully crafted that you feel anxious every second you're reading. This is not the book you read to escape reality. This is the book that from the first page showers you with reality and says, "I'm just getting started. There's a storm coming."

It's got a very easily unlikable protagonist, and yet, somehow, I found myself sympathising and celebrating with Laney time and time again. Wake has a way to pull you in the head of his characters, and, even though I disagreed with Laney's actions ninety-percent of the time, I still couldn't help but eagerly wait to see how it would plan out and worriedly wonder what I would do in her place. My INTJ soul connected to her.

There's something about this book that makes me feel that, if I gave it to one of my professors without saying anything about it, we might get some interesting feedback. And that's coming from someone who more often than not prefers commercial fiction over literary snobbishness.

"I feel crazy," she said, running fingertips down my cheeks like tears. "I need to get out of here."

I've saturated this review with quotes, I know, but that's because I couldn't choose just one. My e-book is more highlighted than not in many pages. The imagery Wake created, the way feelings and places and people are described, are just utterly beautiful. It's the sort of writing that makes me simultaneously want to write ten thousand words and never write again. When I closed the last page, it made me want to start reading again just to bathe on the words and it made me want to start translating it, because that's what I do when I love something so much I can't stand it.

Just to conclude, on a side-note, I've seen some people complaining about the timeline, saying it was confusing, but I didn't even notice it could be confusing until I started reading other people's reviews, long after I was done with the book. I don't think it's confusing at all. The book actually sort of prepares you for it (or at least it felt like this to me). There's something in the way it opens that already says, "This is not your typical contemporary book." And that was enough for me to read it like something other.

All-in-all, I am utterly in love with this crazy story. I recommend it to anyone who loves a well-written, well-told tale. I will remember [b:Black Iris|18829666|Black Iris|Elliot Wake|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420737066l/18829666._SY75_.jpg|26771709] for a very, very long time.

Two girls, cherry-mouthed, glitter-lashed, our skin luminous with moonlight and sweat, making out beneath pennants that still shivered with the afternoon's boy bravado."