I knew that I'll be hooked to this novel just after reading the first paragraph, and I was right. This was a fast-paced page-turner as you can't help but keep on reading until the end of the book just to know what the fuck was actually happening. And just when you thought that it was going to end, it slaps you with a twist that you will not see coming.

 

The synopsis of the book says, 'You'll be scared and you won't know why..'

Well, YES. The book was creepy in a way that you could never guess why exactly you were scared. It just makes you feel like something is going to happen but you can't do anything about it so you just wait for the shit to go down. For instance, the visit at the parent's house was uncomfortable but I couldn't pinpoint why I was feeling that way. Firstly, his parents were behaving weirdly friendly like you just know when someone is actually nice and when someone is faking it. From the beginning, you just know that something is off, that someone is hiding things from you, that the narrator (the girl) was unreliable and untrustworthy and as you get to that part, everything starts to make sense. This is one of those books which you read for the first time and experience it in a way but when you find out the truth and read it for the second time, you experience every scenario, every conversation in a different way and the things will start clicking to you because now you know what exactly was scaring you.

 

The story is told by this unnamed girlfriend of a man known as Jake as they both are in a car by which they are going to visit Jake's childhood farm to meet his parents. The girlfriend, although gives us a lot of reasons as to why she's attracted to Jake, is however thinking of ending things. That's exactly how the book starts. The story is intercut with brief sections of dialogue between two (or more) people who are discussing about a custodian who just killed himself. And now we'll dive into the spoilers….

 

I was confused throughout the novel. What the heck was wrong with his parents? Why were those girls at Dairy Queen giggling at them? And who even stops the car in a snowstorm to drink milkshakes when it's so dark outside? I did not trust Jake at all, you just know when someone is being shady af. What was the need to stop the car to search for a bin to throw the cups in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm? Excuse me? The girlfriend should've been angrier than she was, but I get why she was not because she was the 'ideal' woman in Jake's mind. 

 

 

The part where the twist is presented to us in the audiobook was great. The repetition of "What are you waiting for?" in varied tones until finally the voice of the girl transforms into the man's voice was fantastic. Honestly, it increased the shock value of the twist for me since I did not see that coming. The plot twist was great and although a veteran thriller reader might have guessed it but personally, I could not. I thought that the lady was schizophrenic and she was the one imagining all that but who would've guessed that it was actually that man who had dissociative identity disorder. That was the shocking part and it completely blew me away and made me question whatever the heck I just read in all those previous pages.

 

An old man who is a custodian at a high school is filled with feelings of loneliness, hopelessness and regret as he questions whether he should continue to live on, he plays out a scenario in his head from the perspective of a woman who he wished he dated. The things that the girlfriend likes about Jake are the things that he likes about himself or wishes that others would see the same. At the end we see the man's perspective and find out that he didn't actually give the girl his number and they never talked again so, everything  in the story is happening inside Jake's mind. It's a dreamlike speculation based on real people and fragments of old memories from his past. Jake was just a lonely, mentally unstable man who was dealing with depression. Although I'm not someone who can decode the symbolism of a story easily and aptly but I could tell that this novel was filled with symbols and metaphors that threw light on Jake's depression. The creepy paintings were something that honestly felt like a red herring to me but the dead pigs scene seemed to show the inside of Jake's mind. Just like those maggots entered the pigs body through a small cut and started eating them from inside,  Jake's depression might have been caused by a traumatic experience during childhood which later overpowered his brain. All the scenes played out in his head and while we were under the impression that the girlfriend wanted to end things with him, just because, it was actually Jake himself who was thinking of ending his life. 

 

The 'walking around the school in the dark' scene was, in my opinion, done really well. While reading that, I could sense the fear that the girl was experiencing and it was uncomfortable. You know I love reading those stories where the horrifying things aren't supernatural, but something very much human because it gives you the feeling that it can very much happen to you and this story had bits of that.

I was surprised that a male author had picked up on the psychology of a woman quite well. The girlfriend was apologetic and agreeable. She was always trying to justify the actions of Jake even if it would seem strange to someone else. This is something that women tend to do a lot (I've never seen any of my male friends do something like that) so the fact that a male writer portrayed that thought process so well was amusing.

 

I really liked the atmosphere that the author had created throughout the story, those eerie vibes that make you suspect every single person but what threw me off were the characters, even though I kinda get now why they were the way they were. The writing style was harsh, if that makes sense? The way that the characters spoke to each other was blunt and I did not like Jake at all. Well, I didn't like any of the characters but the way Jake spoke was frustrating. He came out as an arrogant know-it-all who loved to have the last say during any conversation. Personally, I find smart people really attractive but if that person in question is Jake, I would walk away. He was just so imposing and annoying.

 

All in all, this book was really entertaining and I enjoyed how it made me feel. I didn't love it but I totally see this as something that I would recommend to those who like unreliable narratives, roadtrip in a blizzard and the uncertainty of the unknown.