A bittersweet journey through harrowing, heartbreaking, and at times horrendous trials. A grandfather's tale of a tragic life and trying to raise a granddaughter with more than a little obsession with her own self distraction. Love can do a lot of things but it can't save people. This is an absolute masterpiece when it comes to real life hardships and horrors and how sometimes no matter how hard we grasp to hang on we can't change the inevitable. We believe what we want to when it comes to those we love, even when the truth is staring us down.
The narrator is phenomenal at conveying the emotional toll of the characters and bringing this book to life.

This was a wild ride and I was left wondering what was actually true! Mental illness is a sad and treacherous burden on everyone and this book did a great job of laying that out. I will definitely be reading more books by Staci Andrea!

#FraidyHole
#NetGalley

Revised review -
I gave it another try and enjoyed the second half much more than the first. Arlo is an intriguing twist on the classic ‘bad guy’ because the grandfather loves her while he fears her. That’s a tricky balance and fascinating. I just wish the book started later, because the disjointed stories of the first third really didn’t work for me. I wish it had started later, about a third of the way in, then it could be a 4 star read!

ORIGINAL - I really tried to soldier through, because it was a gifted ARC, but by 50% in I still wasn’t interested at all and I just had to put it down. It’s slow moving with cowboy vibes, and I didn’t connect to the grandpa or the granddaughter at all. It felt like a lot of internal talk (from the grandpa) without saying much. I’m sorry I couldn’t get into this one!

'Fraidy Hole' was a solid 3 star book for me - until the last hour. I listened to the audiobook version. I thought the selection of a female narrator was an unusual choice, but Hana Lass's performance is excellent. I almost gave up on this book around the halfway mark, because I was smugly sure that I knew exactly how it would play out. Hahaha! All I will say is, stick with it. In the end, I thought it was terrific. Well worth a listen, and I'll be looking out for more from author Staci Andrea in future.

Hold on! What just happened?

I was so invested in the story of BoBo and Arlo, and I was so pulled into the story with the descriptions and the memories and the nostalgia, the bittersweet memories, and the longing and pain of living without a loved one, and then...the earth just moved from under my feet, and I was left with a seriously boggled mind!

The story is narrated from the POV of BoBo, a grandfather who is trying to raise his grand-daughter, Arlo, single-handedly, after the death of his wife. His son and daughter-in-law(arlo's parents) have also gone their separate ways, and left Arlo with him.

He does his best to bring Arlo up, but he is aware of a deep-seated darkness in this child, who he loves more than life itself, and her behaviour is always compounded tenfold when her best friend, Alabster 'Bast' shows up on the scene, or finds his way back into her life.

At the present moment, she's 22 years old, and back in the town of Freedom, to be with her grandfather for a while, after discovering her boyfriend cheating on her with her best friend. He's afraid that she has done something terrible to her boyfriend, and now, he's convinced that she is going to do something to him as well. She has made multiple attempts on her life when she was younger, and now he believes that she wants to check out and take him with her. After the loss of his wife to cancer, he's not really sure he wants to continue on either, because he is bereft and lonely.

As things unfold, he becomes increasingly suspicious of her motives and believes that she may be poisoning him to death slowly.

Towards the end of the book, we find that he is still alive, and trying to help other families by talking about his grand-daughter's struggles with mental health issues, and Arlo is right there with him. But what about all the things he remembers, and all the things that he and Arlo have done together, even burying a body of a boy who tried to attack her? Why is Arlo lying, and trying to gaslight him, and keep secrets from him, trying to make him believe that what he can clearly remember, never actually happened?? He saw the gun, and the pills, and he knew, he just knew, she was trying to kill him. But here he is still, and she's here with him, and she's taking care of him, and helping him.

At the end, my mouth just hung open, and I was filled with sadness, so much sadness, to imagine what it must feel like to live like that. It wrenched at my heart so much, and I felt so deeply for the person who has to experience it, as well as the people who care for the person with the mental illness.

The book is well-written, and since I listened to the audiobook, I must mention that it was exceptionally narrated by Hana Lass. Quite honestly, I might have given up if I were reading the book myself, because of the lengthy flashbacks and descriptions of events from the past, but I stayed with it because of the narrator, and I'm glad I did, because it was worth it in the end.

I can understand how some readers might get turned off and want to bail, because it might seem like the ramblings of a lonely and nostalgic old man who lives in the past, but if you stick with it, you'll see eventually why it's that way. Sorry I can't say much more, without being Spoily Mc Spoilerson!

Thanks to Netgalley and Tantor Audio for an ARC of this audiobook in return for my honest review.