Cruel

4.5 rounded up.
Evan is a bit naïve or rather he tends to accept what people say as true at face value and often to adopt it as gospel, he's also good at seeing patterns and growing up surrounded by toxic relationships and bullying he molds himself after a variety of people/archetypes in order to survive the bullying as well as his inner turmoil and loneliness.

The matter of fact delivery through most of the story is only broken very occasionally when Evan gets a faint glimpse of possible “love” and it really helps convey how emotionally stunted he is.

It's never said in the story if the character really is but, personally, I read the character as autistic and the whole thing came across not just as a dark coming of age narrative but also as a chilling cautionary tale of emotional neglect. If you struggle with autistic coded characters doing bad things, you might not enjoy this one.

I received a review copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.