5 stars I received an ARC from Netgalley and I now have to add MaryJanice Davidson to my list of favorite authors. I was hooked from page one with a description of a hangover that was so vivid, it brought me back to my younger days when I was stupid enough to suffer from them: “His eyes were so gritty and the room so quiet, he could hear his eyelids sticking and unsticking as he blinked. And sometime in the last few hours, he’d eaten...a dead bird? And washed it down with another dead bird? One that had drowned in vermouth?” It’s not his only hangover. Another is described like this: “Sometime in the night, his tongue had been switched out for a wad of cotton. A dirty wad that tasted like booze. ‘My head is still attached to my body, right? It didn’t blow up or anything?’ He gingerly felt his skull, worried his fingers would sink into it like bread dough. ‘My brain feels really explodey.’” The dry humor continues with ingeniously punctuated interruptions of sentences via italics, parentheses, and paragraph breaks. This leads to a sometimes difficult-to-follow series of thoughts, but only because they are so realistic in their simulation of the rapid-fire thoughts common to all of us. Here’s a funny example: Oh, now that’s too damned ridiculous. “She’s completely coherent! It’s our mom! She’d be coherent if she was dead!” If she was—wait, that makes no—no! Stand by your senseless statement! Double down on the senseless! The characters are memorable and lovable. The plot is amusing until near the end, when it gets a bit confusing. Really, that would be my only complaint. I got a little confused near the end, but I enjoyed the reading so much I’m willing to overlook it: “This dinner looked like the last scene in a sitcom where everyone talks about the lessons learned and then leaves, only to reappear a week later for the next episode.” I half expected Rake to deadpan, “So, you see, the answers were inside of us all along.” Because he is self-deprecating like that, and wouldn’t be averse to using a cliche to make a point. His character is incredibly likable and sympathetic, and as it turns out, very astute. Delaney is a great conflicted hero, a little harder to like/trust because it is clear she is hiding something, whereas Rake is more or less the victim. Lilith is another hero in this story, so really, there are three heroes. And to be honest, I loved all of them! I highly recommend this book and will be looking for more from this author. August 11, 2020
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