Ava Rubin

★ ★ ★
( maybe 3.5 )

Overall, I found this book to be like playing a game of Clue from every single characters POV except with half the amount of cards in your hand, and three times as many culprit cards in the envelope. And on top of that, your cheat sheet card keeps getting erased randomly. Exciting, confusing, frustrating. It simultaneously felt like it should be such a simple mystery to solve, yet I struggled more than I'd like to admit to connect any of the pieces. I don't read mystery, so it was a good genre switch up for me, however, it was overall just too slow and took me too long to finish. (Also this review is super long because I decided to write down my thoughts while reading it; so this is a culmination of that)

About halfway through the book, I was struggling to make sense of things, as well as keep going. The pace was almost too slow, and it just felt very repetitive. I know that's the premise of the book, but it still was starting to bore me. I also had felt that by this point, more things would be making sense, and I'd have connected more dots. I did have some working theories, though: 1) that Anna is actually at the center of it all—she's the murderer and/or creator of the game 2) the mom (Helena) isn't really as involved as we are supposed to think she is, that's a distraction 3) The cuts on both Bell and Gold were self sustained, and supposed to help remind them of something for the next iteration of the loop.

Now, three quarters of the way done, the pace has definitely begun to pick up. I'm not getting bored reading it, and am much more eager to turn the pages! I still honestly have no idea how this ends, and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be like that, or if I'm just slow to the punch.

This book also stirred up some rather philosophical questions within me. I'm writing this portion at the halfway point, so perhaps some of this will get answered in time. Here goes: How do we know who to trust? Where does that gut feeling come from? In situations where you don't know anyone, how can you decide who to trust and lean on? In Aidan's case, with no memory of his life or who he is, where does his confidence in his trust come from? More prominently, though, reading this really got me thinking about the bounds of personality and sense of self. When in a host body/mind, Aidan is constantly having to suppress his host's instincts and thoughts. When he fails to do so, he will act out in the same way the host would in that situation, rather than how he would. But other times he is able to suppress the host so much so that others notice the shift in personality and behavior. So, I wonder where one personality starts and one ends. And, with that, what aspects of personality are core to who you are, and which aspects are merely just there—perhaps as a byproduct of your core qualities. This also made me wonder how “aware” the hosts are while they are the host. Is the personality breaking through actually them being conscious of what is happening, and trying to control the situation? When they are no longer a host, will they remember that day? Anna mentioned that she could feel that she's been trapped there for decades, so is it the same case for those host people? Have they been stuck there for decades, being forced to play a part in this weird game? So when (or if) it is eventually over, what is left of them? Will they know it's been that long, or will it just feel like they pressed resume on their life?

On top of all this, there's the “time travel” groundhogs day aspect to this story that is also beginning to trip me up. On one hand it makes sense, but on the other, it really doesn't, and is seemingly paradoxical. The best example I can think of is with the note Bell reads at the stables. Bell is the day 1 host, so he knows nothing that is going on. He reads the note from Anna (plus a future version of himself as Dance), telling him to go to the graveyard at 10:20pm, make sure your gloves don't burn, etc. etc. Chronologically, this happens on day 1. Then, a couple of days later, when Aidan is Dance, we learn the origin of that letter, and how Anna/Dance wrote it and placed it there because they knew where Bell would be at that time. Dance also knows exactly what to write because he's already read the letter (as a past version of himself). So where did the original thought originate? If Dance decided to write something else, straying from the original note, what does that mean for the Bell of the past—the one from day 1, not the one existing on whatever day this is. Sure, the rest of the day could change (butterfly effect and whatnot), but it's basically the grandfather paradox, but almost in reverse. Although, I suppose this story isn't following the normal rules of spacetime, so everything that is going on isn't really time travel when it comes down to it, so these questions are futile and irrelevant.