Just wrapped this one last night and I can't stop thinking about it. I don't even know where to start or how to fully collect my thoughts, but wanted to touch on two points:
- Did you get the sense (very early on) that the narrator was the one imagining the whole thing? And then feel totally shocked when it turned out to be the other way around? Her repeatedly finding flaws with Jake and talking about something not feeling right in the relationship (even though she couldn't put her finger on what) made me think he was a sort of imaginary symbol for an area of doubt or indecisiveness in her life. And that the road trip to his parents' was a mini self-realization journey that prompted her to take charge and answer that burning question about what she should do?
- There is one big, big clue that somehow flew right over my head: the narrator isn't named. Not even once, I don't think. I did find it odd how we were told virtually nothing about her own background and family life, even though we delved into Jake's. That made me wonder if, again, there was some kind of unreliable narration going on, but I still didn't catch on to the fact that it was all happening in JAKE'S head, not hers.
Idk. I just really don't know how to feel about this book. It creeped me out from beginning to end. One of the scariest books I've read. I'll definitely be thinking about it for a while!
by UnicornGirl7077
2 Comments
you should check out the film that Netflix put out a few years back
Dude yes! That unnamed narrator thing should have been such an obvious tell but I completely missed it too. I was so focused on her internal monologue that I didn’t even question why we knew nothing about her actual life
The scariest part for me was realizing how deep Jake’s delusion went – like he created this whole elaborate fantasy relationship just to torture himself with rejection scenarios. That’s some next level psychological horror right there
Reid really knew what he was doing with that misdirection