Growing up as best friends in small-town New Hampshire, Jon and Chloe are the only ones who truly understand each other, though they can never find the words to tell one another the depth of their feelings. When Jon is finally ready to confess his feelings, he’s suddenly kidnapped by his substitute teacher who is obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and has a plot to save humanity.
Mourning the disappearance of Jon and facing the reality he may never return, Chloe tries to navigate the rites of entering young adulthood and “fit in” with the popular crowd, but thoughts of Jon are never far away.
When Jon finally escapes, he discovers he now has an uncontrollable power that endangers anyone he has intense feelings for. He runs away to protect Chloe and find the answers to his new identity–but he’s soon being tracked by a detective who is fascinated by a series of vigilante killings that appear connected.
Jon has always been a bit of an outcast. He is teased and bullied at school and doesn’t have very many friends. But he has one, Chloe, who straddles the line between being popular but also being friends with Jon. Because Jon is bullied so much, he takes a different way to school every day, a way that involves him cutting through the woods to avoid passing Carrig, his bully, on the streets. One day on his way to school, however, Jon is hit over the head and is kidnapped. No one knows what happened to him, where he went, where he can be. Even worse, not many people care outside of his parents and Chloe.
Four years after his disappearance, Jon wakes up in a basement, alone. There is a Lovecraft book next to him with a note from an old substitute teacher, Blair. He has done something to him, something not right. Jon emerges from the basement bigger, muscular, grown – almost a man. But something is not right. His mother faints in his presence. His father passes out next to him on the couch. When Chloe comes to see him, she faints. Blood trickles out of people’s noses when he’s too close. Jon can’t figure out what is happening – all he knows is he crashes a party to see Chloe, and it ends with one of Chloe’s friends dropping dead at 18, victim of what appears to be a heart attack. Jon knows he did it, though, so he flees his New Hampshire town.
The book jumps ahead four years at this point, and is told through the point of view of Chloe, Jon, and Eggs. Eggs is a Providence cop, a cop who knows something is very weird about all these young people dropping dead of heart attacks. Chloe is trying to make it through life, still mourning Jon deeply. Jon is trying his best not to hurt people, to find his substitute teacher, to figure out what was done to him.
Kepnes crafts a wonderfully gripping story; I tore through this book and didn’t want to put it down. Despite having three narrators throughout the novel, Kepnes is able to make them all sound wonderfully unique, their own persons.
I don’t know that I loved the ending – things got a little too over the top at the end, but I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. I also appreciated how she wrapped up the epilogue and where she left these characters. I enjoyed seeing Eggs’ story particularly unfold. I do think, however, that this is probably a love it or hate it type of book. It is all rooted in the supernatural; from what I understand of her previous books, it’s a sharp turn from “You,” which seems to be pretty loved by most readers I have encountered. I have not read “You”, so I can’t really compare the two, but from reviews I have seen, they’re very different novels. I think that there has to also be a bit of a willingness to not have all the questions answered or to get a concrete ending in order to really enjoy this book. For me, it was about the journey and the ride, so I didn’t mind these things, but it’s worth considering that before deciding to pick it up.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Read it when it comes out in June!
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