This is a truly surrealist gothic fairytale, and, therefore, SO Mona Awad. The story creeps slowly, making the descend more horrifying through the sheer inching pace. I’ve found that all of Awad’s books have, in some way, themes of loneliness tied to self-perception and this is no exception. She touches gorgeously on the feminine experience and mother/daughter conflict while dancing you through a grotesque display of the horror of beauty.  Her light but firm hand on Eurocentrism stays constant throughout the story. Tom Cruise is a big thing in this book? I know next to nothing about the man but I’m choosing to believe it’s his involvement in basically-cult-activity that makes him relevant. This takes place somewhere I spent a lot of my youth which would occasionally throw me out of the story, but that’s no fault to the text itself. My only real gripe is that we don’t experience much time with the initial personality of our protagonist, making her decent less impactful than it could’ve been.

To those who are looking for Bunny: This book is slower than Bunny. It is more understated than Bunny (although, this means little. It’s overt as shit, Bunny was just absolutely insane). It is not as violent as Bunny. However, it possesses that same murky, milky, dreamlike uncertainty that I adore in both texts. Incredibly read.