i'm super drawn to stories that include climbing/the outdoors, so when i saw that this book was about a girl unraveling what happened when her girlfriend dies on a climbing excursion, i was in.

i wish this had worked for me.

ultimately, this is a book about toxic female friendships, something that i'm not often a fan of because i don't think they're done expressly well.

our main character is finn and she's deeply in love with magdu. unfortunately, her childhood bff daphne doesn't seem to be as smitten. off the bat, daphne seems to constantly exert her control over finn. the two seem connected over the deaths of both of their sisters and as the story unfolds, you realize that perhaps their 'innocuous' deaths were actually the work of something much more sinister.

i'm not going to lie, this is billed as a mystery but regular mystery fans aren't going to be surprised with the outcome at all. all in all, the book was fine, but...

there were so much excessive description about finn's period and finn's bad tooth. seriously - the day after her girlfriend dies, she's in an interrogation room being asked questions and finn wonders if the police can smell her period. seriously. it was bizarre.

additionally, there were some murky commentaries that felt either weird, offensive, perfomative, or all three - finn goes to hug her mother to be comforted after returning home after magdu's death. the narrative discusses how comforted she feels about her mom's fat rolls. her mom is sloppy, smelling of cigarette smoke, and poor. it just felt fatphobic and strange.

magdu is a woc. in the narrative, finn says she's proud to be dating someone of color, speculates if it's wrong to be proud she's dating a woc. i found this so strange. other racial commentary was peppered in throughout. i'm not sure how any of this was necessary and frankly, it rubbed me the wrong way.

This book definitely surprised me!

I am thankful to have gotten an ALC for free from Macmillan Audio through NetGalley to enjoy which gave me the opportunity to voluntarily leave a review.

This is a hard book to categorize.. the story moves very slowly is some aspects which that can be because I consumed the audiobook but the narrator recitation seemed to match the prose.

It had sort of a sleepy quality to the story but it made me
Want to keep listening.
Much of the story is the female MC recounting her relationship with her girlfriend Magdu as she processes her death.

I really felt for Finn and Magdu as well as enjoyed listening to how everything unfolded.

This book comes out on March 11, 2025.
My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars and I rarely round up.

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again

Honestly, by the end, I was grateful to never have had a wildly manipulative, narcissistic friend of this magnitude. Here’s to non-shitty besties, they’re the real ones. If you want to absolutely hate a character, this is it.

My biggest issue is the prevailing wait for the pin to drop and when it happens, the growing anticipation yields to mild disappointment. The catharsis we and Finn needed isn’t fully realized. Plus everyone, besides the very horrible one, is kind of unlikeable (sans the dead one), so there’s that. Sophie Loughran does a good job navigated this minefield of psychological angst though.

This broke my heart. This young woman basically loses everything in a tragic moment. The narration was spot on. The story was interesting and I love how she unpacked the relationship with her best friend.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for granting me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was so good but also :( ugh. Magdu.

This was not as a thrilling as I had hoped and I think the repetitive use of names in this book threw me off? Not sure why.

Uggggh. Well. Frustrated by this one, but did enjoy some parts.

This is about Finn and the aftermath of the death of her girlfriend in a climbing “accident.” You get some flashbacks between Finn and her girlfriend as well as Finn and her super toxic best friend, Daphne. There are secrets, tensions, drama, etc.

I guessed the way this ended early on but had dismissed the idea at the time as something that did not make sense. I don’t want to give it away by saying much more - but I found it very, very frustrating.

This book also does something I hate - repeatedly mentions some secret thing that happened and artificially withholds it as a later reveal even though the story is told in first person. In this case I don’t even know that it’s ever revealed? I feel like I missed an explanation for specifically what happened to Finn’s sister…

Other readers describe hating the toxic friendship - not me. I thought that was well-written, believable, uncomfortable, and distressing. It did exactly what it set out to do, and I thought it was a strong part of the book!

I sort of like what happened in the end in theory - I just wish it made more sense given the rest of the book. It didn’t end up working for me at all.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I really liked the premise of the book. Fin's girlfriend dies in a horrible accident, her best friend is clearly problematic, and Fin is just trying to come to terms with everything. Most of the book was done really well but some things irked me quite a bit.

Positives: The girl/girl relationship and all of the issues that can come with that when one of the families is not okay with it. Also the feelings of not feeling 'gay enough' until you've actually been with a woman as bi woman. I thought that was done really well. The twist caught me off guard. Love that I didn't see that coming. The narrator was perfection.

Negatives: The portrayal of the professionals in this book felt off. The way the police treated her, the way her therapist acted, it was odd. I hated Daphne's character so much. The entire book you could tell she was a problem and I got tired of hearing about her. These women are supposed to be 25 and 30 but the storyline feels very we're all 22.

I think there should be trigger warnings for this book. Narcism, sexual assault, suicide.

Overall I did really like the book, besides the small issues that I had with it. I consumed it one go.

I wanted to love this book, as the premise seemed right up my alley. It took too long to get to where it was going. I felt like there wasn’t enough suspense or build up when the truth was revealed. It just seemed like there was too much back and forth between past and present. I do think it was important for the storyline for some of the past reflections, but it was too much.

I will say, I was NOT expecting what had actually happened. I think it was a good twist. The twist redeemed the book a bit for me.

The narrator was great, I listened at 1.75x, and it was a good pace. She was easy to understand and had emotion in her narration.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it just didn’t work for me. The storyline had potential, but it was difficult to stay invested when none of the characters felt relatable or likable. Additionally, the portrayal of the “mean” cops seemed completely unbelievable. An officer wouldn't be that rude or dismissive to someone who has just lost their girlfriend; it felt unrealistic and out of place. Their behavior came across as a caricature rather than a genuine depiction, making the situation feel exaggerated and pulling me out of the story entirely.

Thank you Macmillan for the advance audio!

This book was cleverer by the end than I thought it was while I was reading it - though I’ll admit I had a bit of a tough time slotting all the “before” sections into place chronologically. The whole plot felt like a metaphor for Fin and Daphne’s friendship with Daphne overshadowing all and seeming to drag Fin along in her wake.

I would have loved more outdoors sections (climbing, hiking, etc) because it sounds like that’s a big part of Fin’s life but we really only see it in two scenes - instead spending much more time at her coffeeshop job (even if that was technically only one scene).

I also really loved Fin and Magdu’s relationship, as well as the realistic pressures from without (same sex marriage not being legal in Australia in 2017 when the book is set, grief after a sibling’s death by suicide, being undiagnosed dyslexic in a traditional school setting, having conservative parents who don’t approve of queer relationships, etc)

For such a short book, it was really solid