Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Thank you to Valancourt who gave me this book as part of a giveaway.  

Yes, it was for review.   No, they didn't regulate what kind of review, and how many stars.  

Or alternately:

Because I don't know, guys, I don't know.  I only half-jokingly told someone in another thread that I needed someone else to tell me how I feel because I didn't know; I kinda do.   I don't know anymore. 

I'm trying to figure it out, but I'm pretty much at this point: 

Never has a book so thoroughly fucked with my mind.   And that beginning is so ordinary and banal, I wondered if Valancourt had really published this?   What now?   It's all romance and marriage and college and babies - not really in that order.    I thought of American Psycho, where the horror was contrasted with the banality of listing what everyone was wearing for pages, and fuck you, Ellis.   (I have to admit that I gave up on Ellis after four pages of Vogue-ish devotion to the description of what everyone was wearing down to brand and mix of fabrics in everyone's fucking socks.   Sorry, sorry, that books makes me mad, and not for the misogyny.   For the banality to the point of boring me.)   I have to admit I got the same sense here, and while such banality emphasizes how fucked up the ending is, it's also... excessive in my opinion.   Everything that's seeded was - and then more.   One half star off for that.   

One half star off for the narrator's odd cadence, which made me grit my teeth quite often, even after I had decided it made Irene, the book's first person point-of-view narrator, seem like she might be the psychopath throughout a good chunk of this novel.   I liked that extra mindfuck, as at one point I also decided that it sounded like someone imitating normal-people speech.  I also didn't like it, obviously, so...

I don't know how to review this without major spoilers.   Let's just say that at some point, everything becomes a funhouse mirror.   If the mirrors showed you the most insanely twisted things you could imagine and they were broken because, wait, no, that's not really what things are.   Mirages!   Hallucinations!   Yeah, like a funhouse mirror that show you hallucinations, but you think they're real at the time. 

I kept thinking I knew what was going on, only to have the rug pulled out from under me.   And then that ending, that soul crushing ending.

I'm sorry, guys.  I can't even.   The words that will not come. 

This book is definitely not for everyone.    There are twisted, twisted things that happen, to some of the most vulnerable characters.   This was way back when so they call people retarded.   Not in an offensive way in a matter-of-factly 'this is what we said way back when' way, but it still might piss some people off.   It was shocking to me, until I remember, oh, yeah, people said that back then...

I wish I could come up with something eloquent that did this book justice without spoiling anything.   I can't.   If your'e into dark and twisted, though, I can say THISOMGTHIS!   This book keeps making me shouty-without-pauses.  

Because I don't even know can type right more.   Words mash salad.   This is what this book does to me.   I want to curl up and cry instead of trying to make the language-write-y parts of my brain work because the emotional-not-so-much-write-y parts of my brain are smashing that part with a Vibranium shield, because how can you work with that much emotion?

You can't.   You just can't.  I'm sorry.   This keeps going on, and it's not very right with the words and the feels.  

And there's dinner, which YES, because I don't even have to try anymore.   Read.   Now.  If it's your jam.