These Violent Delights — Micah Nemerever

(DNF - 82% complete)

I thought this was just fine. I found out about it from one of those “What to read if you loved ‘The Secret History’” posts — and if you loved TSH for the plot and thriller-ish aspects then that makes sense; if you loved TSH for the prose/literary/philosophical aspects then this book is not like TSH at all.

I don’t have much to say about this book to be honest, because (as I said) it was simply fine. Nothing to really hate about it but nothing to love. 

I enjoyed the characters for the most part and had a fun time trying to determine who was truly the instigator. The middle dragged on a bit, but not so much that I couldn’t keep reading. 

The Leopold and Loeb references were interesting. To me, Paul is incredibly Autistic-coded and it worked really well. The whole premise is supposedly about queer isolation, and Paul feels even further isolated because of how “weird” he is, how he doesn’t react to things “correctly”, or know what to say, or how to read social interactions

About DNF-ing: I rarely DNF a book, especially if I’ve read so much of it. I feel like that shows how I was feeling about it. I truly felt like I was pushing myself to read it. I’ve finished plenty of “bad” books before, and as I’ve said before I wouldn’t call this a bad book - I just truly couldn’t get invested, even being so close to the end.