Antisemitism, racism, white supremacy, homophobia and so on. This story focuses on Rachel, a queer Jewish teacher and actress having an affair/relationship with Liz a fellow teacher, who is married and has two children. Rachel plays Louise in a theatre play, a woman who is against abortion, preaching pro-life. When Rachel tells in an interview that she’s pro-choice, hell breaks loose. She’s been harassed on Facebook and Messenger by pro-Nazi’s and even her address is disclosed. When a Swastika is painted on her door she flees her house and goes back to her hometown where she meets Stephen again, the neighbor she played games with in her childhood.

This book is told from different POV’s, Rachel’s and Stephen’s and sometimes Gladys’, Rachel’s grandmother. It also has a dual timeline, jumping from now to the childhood Rachel and Stephen had and back again. Both MC’s have complicated characters, formed by their upbringing among other things,

From the beginning Stephen’s story is horrifying, playing Nazi’s as a child together with Rachel, the Jewish girl, his German grandpa proudly showing six-year-old Stephen a gun because he killed a Jew resistance fighter with it. My chest tightened sometimes when I read about the games Stephen and Rachel played. Dishonestly discharged from the army Stephen doesn’t really know what to do with his life.

The story started powerful and captivating but after the beginning the pacing slowed down and I got a little bit bored. In the second half of the story the pacing became faster again and I found the book more engaging. Overall Shawne Steiner has written an interesting story about antisemitism and Nazism in the present. I liked her writing:
He sometimes wished for an older brother or even just a friend who never said anything that made fire explode in his chest and blackness overwhelm him so he lost control and punched and punched until his knuckles hurt and the friend wasn’t his friend anymore.

3.5 stars but because it took me by surprise I round it up to four.