I am so conflicted about this book. I loved it and hated it at the same time.

- What about you? Did you love him or hate him?
- Usually both at once.
- Is this what you mean about feeling everything twice?
- Ah. You see, you do understand me.

The plot is very familiar (obviously Tartt's influence), and I don’t think it’s an issue because I don’t know many books like this.

We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passions of the world bound in leather and vellum. (I blame this in part for what happened).

I am not that into Shakespeare and theatre, so for me, it was a little hard to relate to the characters’ passion. But I knew it was significant for the plot, so I did my homework and googled the meanings of all the references (I am a non-native English speaker, so Old English is a little difficult for me). There’s a charm to it all, but I think I would be annoyed if someone recited to me Shakespeare every time I tried to have a conversation. But I appreciate the hard work and beauty displayed by the author.

- You think it was Macbeth that fucked us up?
- No. I think we were fucked up from the start.

What made me excited about this book - it’s its ending. Although I quite much predicted very early on how exactly Oliver got into the situation he is in at the beginning of the book, the last pages blew my mind! I love how open the ending is. It makes you mad at the author but hopeful at the same time, leaving you with a lingering feeling of doubt that prolongs the aftertaste of the book. You definitely will be pondering over it many times.

You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.

So this book has many issues, but there are already a lot of good points made in other wonderfully written reviews. But I mainly evaluate the books that I read based on my experience. I enjoyed reading it, enjoyed thinking about it, shed tears over it, and learned something new too. That’s a very solid 4.