This was my first Boyne book so I cannot compare this work to previous ones, but if the others are anything like this on, the man is a genius.

This was a bit of a beastie and that caused me to put it off longer than I should have due to bad experiences with longer books dragging on for the sake of additional pages. This did not drag on at all. Everything that happens to Cyril throughout this book has a purpose and an impact on his life as well as the lives of the people around him.

Cyril is a queer male in Ireland during a time where it was illegal to be so and could mean death if found out. Due to this, there is a lot of hate crimes and violence throughout the book that also end in some deaths, so definitely beware of that before picking it up. There is also a good amount of misogyny and discussions on the hypocrisy of the church. Again, everything that happens in here had a purpose behind it, so it never came across as just hating against anyone.

Highly recommend this one. I laughed, I cried, I gasped, all the emotions that a good book will pull out of your soul.