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This was a shameless gossip read for me, I'll admit it. My mom was obsessed with the Duggars and their show and would always have it on in the background. Something about it always gave me a bit of the ick so I never watched it with her, but I remember enough about what was going on in some of the episodes so I figured I would give this a read because I like to support people that break the cult cycles of their families.

Hearing the way that she was raised by her parents to always be under her dad's thumb resounded heavily with me due to being raised in a religious family that wanted me to be a good little submissive housewife for someone in the future, and they weren't even involved in anything more than a standard religion. I am really glad that she references that the only reason they have been able to solidly move forward and get to where they are is due to working heavily with a therapist.

I know she said this wasn't meant to be a dirty tell-all, and there is noticeably quite a bit of information left out, but she still needs to protect her peace and she is still hoping to try to be able to have a relationship with her family at some point (on her own terms, obviously), so I can understand why she would not want to get into the deep conversations more and just kind of brush over them.

If you didn't know the show growing up, I don't really know how much this would interest anyone. But for those that are interested in learning more about different cults, she puts a good amount of information on that in the pages. So I can't say I would really recommend it, but if either of those would interest you, I think it'd be a decent read.

I had to keep reminding myself that NO, I did NOT want June to win and come out on top, that she is a despicable selfish person that deserves every horrible thing that she gets.

R.F. Kuang does a really great job at pointing out the toxic things that (some) publishing companies will do to try to make it look like they're all for diversity and for leaving you to really have to stew and think about how far was too far with what Claire does. It was a very uncomfortable read, but in a good way.

Overall, I found this to be a good read, but it did feel like it was just a little too long and the ending threw me for a bit of a loop, and not in a good way. Definitely not mad that I read it, though! Still fully worth the 4 stars to me!

I did enjoy this book, but I can absolutely see how fans of horror may have been disappointed in it. "Unspeakable horrors" and "ultimate haunted house" (found on the cover) were not really good ways to describe this book. I can fully understand why some are irritated with this one. But since I'm a blind reader and don't read into my books for the most part, it didn't bother me at all.

I felt like there was a good amount of suspense and tension through the book. The structure is a little weird because you start off with how the crew came across the ship and get to relive the experience through the MC, Claire. Then you jump to "present time" where you realize that the story-telling has been her literally telling the story to the corporate bosses. The middle gets a little mundane and could have been cut down a bit since they're just getting her to say ok to going back out to the ship. Then she's back on the ship and chaos ensues once again.

I found this to be a fun read overall and the suspense had me flipping through pages and staying up later than I should have to read more. There is a little romance plot thrown in and I don't really feel like it added anything to the story at all and really didn't need to be in there, but it didn't bother me much.

I would recommend this one to be read for a good suspense read with some gore, but go into it knowing that you're not going to get a real horror story out of it.