Brittle and hard, like ice. Soft and bruised. Loud and intense but extremely internal even claustrophobic. Destructive in a real misery loves company way. 

The synopsis is a fking lie ok we need to start there, the original sin. This is not a story about toxic friendship or whatever tf it said, this is a story about girls wanting to disappear so achingly badly. They choose their hiding methods: anorexia and bulimia ofc, to minimize their surface area and control the chances of being perceived; each other, to know someone else so deeply that they have an escape from the misery of their own minds, to have someone to blame, someone else to pour into so they don't have to think about how empty they are; music (or movies) that they can fixate on in a way that allows them to become nothing more than a vessel, a body that only hears, only shoves, only perceives but is never individualized, is the masses. Either way, you never have to be yourself. Your only friend , who knows you so completely, still can't escape her own head long enough to think about you or consider you and maybe that's what drew you to her. 

I'm so torn, this was really beautiful writing but she used it to write the most godawful internal monologue ever written. A gutting exploration of mental illness - particularly depression, anxiety, OCD, and heavy heavy heavy eating disorder content. Like 80% of the book is just about one or both character's anorexia. And like no content warnings at all? Not even a mention of ED in the synopsis? When it was like literally 75% of the book? The synopsis fking lied to me. And it's 2024 put some fking content warnings in this book. 

Anyways. Like I said I'm torn. it was an honest exploration but god it was dark. I understand that whatever healing we're supposed to think went on was just barely enough  for them to hang on to life and that's real, and ED is a chronic illness and it's not magically cured at 30 and people still struggling with it do choose to do things like adopt a child... from Africa? But it just felt like fking raking myself across the coals towards the end there being inside a brain starving itself for 10 years.  And like I love a character study, I do, but what is the point of this story? To spend 300 pages in the passenger seat of a car being repeatedly driven nearly off a cliff? To glorify or humanize or honor or honestly  profit off of anorexia...  what is this book doing? What is it saying? No fr someone tell me.  

If you feel like DNFing at 30%, 40%, DO IT. SAVE YOURSELF while you still can. Nothing changes. Or it gets worse. I didn't highlight a word past page 69. I guess I'm not torn if my thoughts are that the last 250 pages aren't worth reading.