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The Family Condition
"A surprisingly affecting tale of terror." - Kirkus Reviews
Elodie Villeneuve has monsters in her family. When Bennett and Elodie first meet, the connection is immediate and intense. Both of them are trying to escape the shadows of their pasts, hoping to make sense of their lives in the present. Although they're new to each other, their devotion runs deep. But the shadow that hangs over Elodie--the disturbing legacy of her lineage and the genetic condition that haunts it--cannot be ignored for long.
Meeting the family of your significant other is never easy. For Bennett, it means coming face-to-face with a reality outside his understanding. His curiosity has led him to strange, sometimes dangerous places before, but never to the precipice where love and darkness meet, along the blurry line that divides people from monsters.
Elodie Villeneuve has monsters in her family. When Bennett and Elodie first meet, the connection is immediate and intense. Both of them are trying to escape the shadows of their pasts, hoping to make sense of their lives in the present. Although they're new to each other, their devotion runs deep. But the shadow that hangs over Elodie--the disturbing legacy of her lineage and the genetic condition that haunts it--cannot be ignored for long.
Meeting the family of your significant other is never easy. For Bennett, it means coming face-to-face with a reality outside his understanding. His curiosity has led him to strange, sometimes dangerous places before, but never to the precipice where love and darkness meet, along the blurry line that divides people from monsters.
336 pages, Paperback
Published September 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
August 27, 2024
This book was not for me.
December 31, 2022
My last read of 2022 is a book that will stay with me for a very long time. It’s frightening and heartbreaking tale, monstrous and deeply human.
There’s a lot to admire here; the exquisite language, the insight into human behaviour, the philosophical touches, the immense empathy which color every page of Lakin’s dark and tragic tale - this novel has it all.
The last chapter moved me to tears.
I have loved Cody Lakin’s writing since his first novel, but man oh man has he grown into a really brilliant storyteller. And we are lucky that he shares them with us. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next!
My favorite book in 2022✨
There’s a lot to admire here; the exquisite language, the insight into human behaviour, the philosophical touches, the immense empathy which color every page of Lakin’s dark and tragic tale - this novel has it all.
The last chapter moved me to tears.
I have loved Cody Lakin’s writing since his first novel, but man oh man has he grown into a really brilliant storyteller. And we are lucky that he shares them with us. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next!
My favorite book in 2022✨
May 6, 2023
This book was a difficult read for me I had to force myself to finish it. I wish the story would’ve gone full horror or full romance I never got what the point was.
Maybe it’s just my opinion but it reads as if the author wanted this to be a movie? The dialogue was very awkward and cheesy and honestly not very exciting.
Maybe it’s just my opinion but it reads as if the author wanted this to be a movie? The dialogue was very awkward and cheesy and honestly not very exciting.
January 14, 2023
weird as hell but like, i didn’t hate it 😂
July 11, 2023
I think there was great potential and interesting concepts here. The themes of love, sacrifice, selflessness, family, etc all had opportunity for nuanced and unique exploration amidst the background of an eerie thriller. Unfortunately, this novel just suffers too much from extensive and heavy-handed over explanation, the manic-pixie-dream-girlification of it’s love interest through the sanctimonious lens of our banal protagonist, and the occasional grammar and spelling mistakes which overall lends to the feeling of this being a first draft of something rather than a finished work. Sentences without periods, improper usage of “I” vs “me,” and an over-reliance on swearing as a means for conveying the gravity of a situation all gave me pause and yanked me clean from the narrative through line.
“The Family Condition”‘s prose style also poises the odd problem of not allowing it’s reader to make any conclusions of their own. I want to figure out that a character would be willing to sacrifice anything for the person they love based on their actions, not simply because it is written so on the page. I want to observe and see for myself how “fucked up” our antagonist is by observing “fucked up” things that he does and his “fucked up” response to those things, not simply because my protagonist just tells me how “fucked up” he is all the time. It gives me the same feeling as when you’re a child and your parents tell you to do something “because I said so!” and you are left angry, unreasoned with, and belittled.
I did enjoy the underlying premise at the heart of this, I just wish this had been hashed through and maybe undergone a few more rounds of editing before it hit the stand. Feels like an otherwise interesting read got lost in surface-level efforts to say a lot of things in a deep or profound way and in doing so lost what it was trying to say at all.
“The Family Condition”‘s prose style also poises the odd problem of not allowing it’s reader to make any conclusions of their own. I want to figure out that a character would be willing to sacrifice anything for the person they love based on their actions, not simply because it is written so on the page. I want to observe and see for myself how “fucked up” our antagonist is by observing “fucked up” things that he does and his “fucked up” response to those things, not simply because my protagonist just tells me how “fucked up” he is all the time. It gives me the same feeling as when you’re a child and your parents tell you to do something “because I said so!” and you are left angry, unreasoned with, and belittled.
I did enjoy the underlying premise at the heart of this, I just wish this had been hashed through and maybe undergone a few more rounds of editing before it hit the stand. Feels like an otherwise interesting read got lost in surface-level efforts to say a lot of things in a deep or profound way and in doing so lost what it was trying to say at all.
April 8, 2023
This felt like a book that was almost there. The ideas were clear but the execution left me a little wanting. The most interesting parts of this book were Elodie and her mother (and to a certain extent, her father), but unfortunately everything we learned about them came through the lens of Bennet, our frustratingly mediocre narrator who spends the first half of the book turning Elodie into a manic pixie dream girl and the second half of the book turning himself into her white knight.
September 28, 2022
A poignantly beautiful and oftentimes darkly humorous book, The Family Condition had my interest from the get go. I'm not often one for horror, but the concept grabbed me and didn't let me go until the final pages, when finally I was able to breathe again. Terrifying, fascinating, and heart-wrenching all at once.
February 7, 2023
This is not a horror story, it’s a love story and it’s going to stick with me for a long, long time. I don’t think I’ll ever not recommend this book.
March 7, 2024
Overwritten “Nice Guy” fantasy of a manic-pixie-dreamgirl that will turn into a hot-but-catatonic-reptilian. Should have been a DNF.
May 10, 2023
this says a lot about our society
July 5, 2025
"Nothing at all that we can do-ever vanishes the dark that lives inside."
I spotted this book while I was at BN. They had a huge display and I decided what the hell. I wouldn’t be steered wrong with a cover like that… or so I thought.
This took too long to go anywhere. I was halfway done when you finally caught on to the bigger picture and by that point I was ready to give up. Then the horror behind it all was nothing original and overused. I’m cheering for the unhinged women to destroy it all!!
I spotted this book while I was at BN. They had a huge display and I decided what the hell. I wouldn’t be steered wrong with a cover like that… or so I thought.
This took too long to go anywhere. I was halfway done when you finally caught on to the bigger picture and by that point I was ready to give up. Then the horror behind it all was nothing original and overused. I’m cheering for the unhinged women to destroy it all!!
dnf-d
October 10, 2023DNF'd after one chapter (I'll refrain from giving this book a star rating because of that). Man, it's been a while since I DNF'd a book.
The synopsis, premise, and interesting cover design caused me to pick this one up (from a display table at Barnes & Noble that billed this as "BookTok horror"--possibly mistakenly, because I had never seen this book mentioned before encountering it at the store). Gothic horror with a side of family trauma sounded right up my alley. I'm disappointed to find that it wasn't, particularly since I've been looking forward to reading it for a while.
The writing commits two cardinal sins.
First, the narrator addresses the reader almost constantly, telling them exactly what to think about everything that's going on, in one of the most egregious examples of "telling not showing" I have ever seen in a published book. The absolute lack of any trust in the reader to understand what's happening in a scene without being instructed how to think about it is extremely off-putting. As an example, if a person uses a slur I'm going to understand that they're a bigot. You don't need to tell me flat out that the person is a bigot. I got it the first time. I'm good. Really.
Second, unironic use of the manic pixie dream girl trope. Few things can make my estimation of the author fall so rapidly. In a book that deals with the female lead's familial relationships heavily, I want the assurance that the character is going to be treated as a person. None of that is to be found in the first chapter, and certainly nothing to assure me that things would improve if I read on. The several pages the author dedicates to describing Bennet's ex cheating on him further emphasizes the undercurrent of misogyny, and was the final nail in the coffin for me.
This book loses additional points for using a homophobic encounter as a meet-cute for its male and female leads. To summarize, Bennet (our narrator) bumps into a man at the bar, who proceeds to call him a faggot. Elodie (our female lead and love interest) proceeds to taunt him, saying "Do you want to fuck my friend here?" "Do you want to have sex with him?" etc. The homophobe gets embarrassed and runs away, and Bennet and Elodie bond over this incident for some bizarre reason and end up drinking together and ultimately going home together.
Another note on Bennet--his sanctimoniousness is sickening. Rarely have I heard a person make such a show of their moral superiority who wasn't either a fundie or an incel. I'm not interested in being lectured by this dude for almost 300 pages.
I didn't make it far enough to encounter any of the grammatical errors other reviewers have pointed out, but from the little I did read I do think this book could have done with a harsh developmental edit. The premise was intriguing, and with different execution perhaps it would have been readable.
The synopsis, premise, and interesting cover design caused me to pick this one up (from a display table at Barnes & Noble that billed this as "BookTok horror"--possibly mistakenly, because I had never seen this book mentioned before encountering it at the store). Gothic horror with a side of family trauma sounded right up my alley. I'm disappointed to find that it wasn't, particularly since I've been looking forward to reading it for a while.
The writing commits two cardinal sins.
First, the narrator addresses the reader almost constantly, telling them exactly what to think about everything that's going on, in one of the most egregious examples of "telling not showing" I have ever seen in a published book. The absolute lack of any trust in the reader to understand what's happening in a scene without being instructed how to think about it is extremely off-putting. As an example, if a person uses a slur I'm going to understand that they're a bigot. You don't need to tell me flat out that the person is a bigot. I got it the first time. I'm good. Really.
Second, unironic use of the manic pixie dream girl trope. Few things can make my estimation of the author fall so rapidly. In a book that deals with the female lead's familial relationships heavily, I want the assurance that the character is going to be treated as a person. None of that is to be found in the first chapter, and certainly nothing to assure me that things would improve if I read on. The several pages the author dedicates to describing Bennet's ex cheating on him further emphasizes the undercurrent of misogyny, and was the final nail in the coffin for me.
This book loses additional points for using a homophobic encounter as a meet-cute for its male and female leads. To summarize, Bennet (our narrator) bumps into a man at the bar, who proceeds to call him a faggot. Elodie (our female lead and love interest) proceeds to taunt him, saying "Do you want to fuck my friend here?" "Do you want to have sex with him?" etc. The homophobe gets embarrassed and runs away, and Bennet and Elodie bond over this incident for some bizarre reason and end up drinking together and ultimately going home together.
Another note on Bennet--his sanctimoniousness is sickening. Rarely have I heard a person make such a show of their moral superiority who wasn't either a fundie or an incel. I'm not interested in being lectured by this dude for almost 300 pages.
I didn't make it far enough to encounter any of the grammatical errors other reviewers have pointed out, but from the little I did read I do think this book could have done with a harsh developmental edit. The premise was intriguing, and with different execution perhaps it would have been readable.
July 2, 2023
I will keep it simple.
This book ignited my passion for reading(Prior millionaire club member). I hoped for more of a Horror aspect but not complaining. Love can tame the monsters inside all of us. Would I have made the same choices Hugo and Bennett made? No. Do I see their choices as selfish? Also no.
Good job to me for choosing an excellent book as my introduction back to the reading world and to my book club…
You’re welcome.
This book ignited my passion for reading(Prior millionaire club member). I hoped for more of a Horror aspect but not complaining. Love can tame the monsters inside all of us. Would I have made the same choices Hugo and Bennett made? No. Do I see their choices as selfish? Also no.
Good job to me for choosing an excellent book as my introduction back to the reading world and to my book club…
You’re welcome.
August 22, 2023
The Family Condition has one of the most intriguing opening sentences ever - “The first time her mother tried to kill her, Elodie was only a few days old.”
Elodie and Bennett met at a night club, both trying to escape their dark pasts but their pasts haunted them in different ways. Bennett was getting over a bad relationship, while Elodie was running from her family. Elodie’s family was odd, eccentric and secretive. She grew up an only child, hidden away from society in her father’s estate. Not only was Elodie trying to forget her parents, but the strange genetic condition that haunted her mother’s side of the family. What would Bennett think when he met Hugo and Alodia Villeneuve, Elodie’s parents?
I had no idea what to expect when I first started The Family Condition. I knew there was something messed up about Elodie’s family and I wanted to know what, especially after reading the novel’s opening line. The Family Condition was a quick read, both a love story and a horror novel. I wish it had more horror components and was a little darker but I still enjoyed it. When I first started it, I did not like Elodie’s parents at all but Lakin throws a curveball, making me root for the whole Villeneuve family. The Family Condition is a great read for fans of Darcy Coates’ Black Winter Series, with similar romance dynamics, action, and twisted families throughout.
Elodie and Bennett met at a night club, both trying to escape their dark pasts but their pasts haunted them in different ways. Bennett was getting over a bad relationship, while Elodie was running from her family. Elodie’s family was odd, eccentric and secretive. She grew up an only child, hidden away from society in her father’s estate. Not only was Elodie trying to forget her parents, but the strange genetic condition that haunted her mother’s side of the family. What would Bennett think when he met Hugo and Alodia Villeneuve, Elodie’s parents?
I had no idea what to expect when I first started The Family Condition. I knew there was something messed up about Elodie’s family and I wanted to know what, especially after reading the novel’s opening line. The Family Condition was a quick read, both a love story and a horror novel. I wish it had more horror components and was a little darker but I still enjoyed it. When I first started it, I did not like Elodie’s parents at all but Lakin throws a curveball, making me root for the whole Villeneuve family. The Family Condition is a great read for fans of Darcy Coates’ Black Winter Series, with similar romance dynamics, action, and twisted families throughout.
July 19, 2024
i’m going to start with the negatives of the book because i do think there are a few redeeming qualities.
however, my main issue with the book is the writing style of the author. way too many run on sentences of metaphors that either add nothing to the story, or totally convolute it. also, the endless jabs and direct addressing of the reader for emphasis (of what i’m not sure) got tiring after a while. lastly, a lot of the plot and dialogue just seemed really infantile and cliche, like a really bad movie.
i did really enjoy the concept of the book and its potential, the idea is a great one. i even thought some of the long-winded quotes of some characters (hugo) were pretty nice! overall, i just wish there was some more fine tuning and polishing for this book’s pretty cool concept.
however, my main issue with the book is the writing style of the author. way too many run on sentences of metaphors that either add nothing to the story, or totally convolute it. also, the endless jabs and direct addressing of the reader for emphasis (of what i’m not sure) got tiring after a while. lastly, a lot of the plot and dialogue just seemed really infantile and cliche, like a really bad movie.
i did really enjoy the concept of the book and its potential, the idea is a great one. i even thought some of the long-winded quotes of some characters (hugo) were pretty nice! overall, i just wish there was some more fine tuning and polishing for this book’s pretty cool concept.
June 11, 2024
I went into this one completely blind and picked it up simply because I thought the cover was cool. It leaned more towards gothic romance than horror, but I (mostly) enjoyed the monologue-esque prose as Bennet tells us the story of the woman he falls in love with and everything it entails. Certainly not your typical meet-the-parents story! At times overwritten but a surprisingly beautiful story about love, acceptance, and illness.
3.5 ⭐️
3.5 ⭐️
June 28, 2025
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!!
Absolutely blew my mind with the depth of character relationships while also keeping a dark, sharp sense of humor and very disturbing themes and overtones. I had never heard of it before but it was a bizarre, creepy, heartwarming nightmare and would highly recommend to any horror fans <3333
May 21, 2024
This was an interesting. A meditation on love, sacrifice, and sickness. I would love to read it from Elodie’s perspective though. It is a story about sickness that runs through the females in the family line and most of the insight and experience incomes from the men in the story.
June 23, 2024
this book shouldn’t be in the horror section. not once did i dele fear or dread or anticipation or anything. it mostly made me feel nothing. i didn’t care about any of the characters. there were some interesting ideas that were brought up but were either dropped completely or not explored well enough.
March 13, 2024
This was a 2023 bookclub read that I didn't get to finish. I'm glad I came back to it.
I can't decide if this is more romance or horror. It has strong elements of both.
I didn't find the romance to be forced or cheesy. It was very refreshing. I felt invested with his growing love, as he took in "the family condition" and really contemplated what it took.
The horror part of it was great! I could almost see the monster described. Lankin did a phenomenal job describing exactly what those who had the "condition" were capable of. I could see the feral and predatory eyes of these women.
But overall, it was a nice happy ending.
I really appreciated the theme that, when you find the one person you love, love them with your whole being, and have no regrets. Regardless of issues that arise in the future. It was wholesome.... amoungst the gore.
I can't decide if this is more romance or horror. It has strong elements of both.
I didn't find the romance to be forced or cheesy. It was very refreshing. I felt invested with his growing love, as he took in "the family condition" and really contemplated what it took.
The horror part of it was great! I could almost see the monster described. Lankin did a phenomenal job describing exactly what those who had the "condition" were capable of. I could see the feral and predatory eyes of these women.
But overall, it was a nice happy ending.
I really appreciated the theme that, when you find the one person you love, love them with your whole being, and have no regrets. Regardless of issues that arise in the future. It was wholesome.... amoungst the gore.
August 23, 2023
Given that I was interested enough in the story that I wanted to finish it, I considered giving it 3 stars but I couldn’t do so in good conscience. There were too many things about the story that didn’t make sense and too many grammatical errors (not counting the intentional ones written for the Bailey men).
First, the author needs to improve his grammar if he wants to be taken seriously. This book reads like a self-published book with no editing.
Second, while it was an interesting idea, the execution did not provide a believable plot. A horror story must be written so that the reader believes that the strange story being told could happen. To be believable it has to make sense and be internally consistent. This story has too many inconsistencies and things that simply don’t make sense.
Third, the beginning of the book, designed to draw you in by suggesting that Elodie’s mother made multiple attempts to kill her, is deliberately misleading. Throughout the story there are other suggestions that aren’t later explained or developed. What are the tests? Is there incest? Also, conveniently, the family condition isn’t consistent. It seems like the condition changes too many times for the convenience of the author.
Finally, even though we are told not to judge a book by its cover, we often do. This book has a horrible cover that is also misleading.
I will say that the writing was good enough that as I was reading the book I could clearly visualize it as a B movie. Maybe writing a B movie was the author’s objective? Certainly some of the scenes he created, (for example, the women left in rags or less walking around in a corral, or the naked women in the hospital) seem to be written for a B movie.
It is too bad that these days books are published without editors. (The lack of an actual editor was confirmed by the acknowledgements.) This author has potential but an editor needed to send this book back to him for more work
First, the author needs to improve his grammar if he wants to be taken seriously. This book reads like a self-published book with no editing.
Second, while it was an interesting idea, the execution did not provide a believable plot. A horror story must be written so that the reader believes that the strange story being told could happen. To be believable it has to make sense and be internally consistent. This story has too many inconsistencies and things that simply don’t make sense.
Third, the beginning of the book, designed to draw you in by suggesting that Elodie’s mother made multiple attempts to kill her, is deliberately misleading. Throughout the story there are other suggestions that aren’t later explained or developed. What are the tests? Is there incest? Also, conveniently, the family condition isn’t consistent. It seems like the condition changes too many times for the convenience of the author.
Finally, even though we are told not to judge a book by its cover, we often do. This book has a horrible cover that is also misleading.
I will say that the writing was good enough that as I was reading the book I could clearly visualize it as a B movie. Maybe writing a B movie was the author’s objective? Certainly some of the scenes he created, (for example, the women left in rags or less walking around in a corral, or the naked women in the hospital) seem to be written for a B movie.
It is too bad that these days books are published without editors. (The lack of an actual editor was confirmed by the acknowledgements.) This author has potential but an editor needed to send this book back to him for more work
March 26, 2023
I’ll say right off that horror isn’t my genre, but I did find myself loving the main character Bennett’s voice. The way he saw the world and interacted with Elodie kept me reading this book at a steady pace. There was some graphic/explicit content in this book that was too much for me at times: but again, this is due to personal tastes. My favorite aspect of The Family Condition was the author’s thought-provoking—and oftentimes beautiful—prose. That was the biggest draw for me, along with the major theme of love and how powerful a force it can be: powerful enough to love someone unconditionally, despite how a strange condition may affect their mind/appearance over time. The ending left me satisfied, and the climatic action sequence had me gulping down the pages. Overall, it is a very well-written story.
September 6, 2023
This book is top tier in my humble opinion. As an avid reader of all things horror, it is rare to find a book written with such beautiful prose that it can stand beside the tragic love-loss tales of Poe, but here we are. I found this beautiful, heart-warming, tragic, and poignant. It's not necessarily the tale itself I found so profound [though I very much loved the story], it's the voice of the author that really struck me.
The steady pacing, the heartbreaking story, the strangely unique cast of characters- all wonderful.
There are very few authors on my "automatic buy" list and Cody Lakin is now one of them.
The steady pacing, the heartbreaking story, the strangely unique cast of characters- all wonderful.
There are very few authors on my "automatic buy" list and Cody Lakin is now one of them.
January 12, 2024
This book was super cute with a tinge of horror/sci-fi. Definitely more of a love story than a scary read, wished I’d known that going in. Overall, the writing was captivating and descriptive and I enjoyed the story line.
October 17, 2023
seemed interesting but bored me to death and i feel like the writing wasn’t really good…….
January 15, 2024
While a dark and frankly sicking story it was a beautiful book that I highly enjoyed!
October 1, 2023
I have so many thoughts!!! I truly never thought that when I randomly selected this book off of the horror shelf that I would not only be reading a disturbing horror novel, but simultaneously one of the most strangely beautiful stories of unconditional love??? and in no world did I expect to be SOBBING at the end of it???
I also definitely didn’t expect to relate to the main character as deeply as I did. obviously that fades as the “horror” aspect of the book takes off and dives a bit further from reality— but as someone who comes from a family that is far from normal and has plenty of their own fucked up issues, this hit HOME. Took me right back to having to unravel and introduce what I had been raised with as “normal” to an outsider that I loved, hoping they could love me despite it all, even knowing that I would carry it inside of me forever. It gave me so much empathy and such a deep understanding of Elodie. AH I loved this book!!!
“And if that was Elodie's reality, it must’ve taken so much courage, so much willingness to change and step into the unknown, for her to grow apart from them, to realize they weren’t normal, and to run away and try to make her own life.
And it must’ve taken even more courage to return—and to bring me with her.
How hard it must have been for her to live without knowing what constituted a normal life. Where would you start? How would you know what you wanted from other people, and from yourself?”
I also definitely didn’t expect to relate to the main character as deeply as I did. obviously that fades as the “horror” aspect of the book takes off and dives a bit further from reality— but as someone who comes from a family that is far from normal and has plenty of their own fucked up issues, this hit HOME. Took me right back to having to unravel and introduce what I had been raised with as “normal” to an outsider that I loved, hoping they could love me despite it all, even knowing that I would carry it inside of me forever. It gave me so much empathy and such a deep understanding of Elodie. AH I loved this book!!!
“And if that was Elodie's reality, it must’ve taken so much courage, so much willingness to change and step into the unknown, for her to grow apart from them, to realize they weren’t normal, and to run away and try to make her own life.
And it must’ve taken even more courage to return—and to bring me with her.
How hard it must have been for her to live without knowing what constituted a normal life. Where would you start? How would you know what you wanted from other people, and from yourself?”
September 29, 2025
i really liked this! i completely understand the whole whirlwind romance (cough robert cough), while some people might call it insta-love, it was never marketed as anything romantic. i love horror, and while im impartial to romance, i loved seeing bennet and elodie stick by each other.
i will admit, i cried when hugo was telling alodia how much he loved her at the end. it was just so beautiful, and i think everybody hopes to be loved in the same way hugo loves alodia.
i do think the bailey family condition was a metaphor for any type of genetic illness that changes a person’s mind. we see this every day, and we also see how while some people unfortunately fall into these diseases, they are still so so loved by their family and by their s/o. to be loved despite your flaws is a beautiful thing.
i took off one star because i didn’t understand why kendra was present throughout the story. i get why she was there in the beginning- to show how bennet was wary and cautious when it came to love. but, when he saw her later, i guess it was to show how much he loved elodie? but still, it mentioned her calling him, and the topic of kendra was never really brought up again.
i really, REALLY liked this book and i think it was a perfect fall read !!!!
i will admit, i cried when hugo was telling alodia how much he loved her at the end. it was just so beautiful, and i think everybody hopes to be loved in the same way hugo loves alodia.
i do think the bailey family condition was a metaphor for any type of genetic illness that changes a person’s mind. we see this every day, and we also see how while some people unfortunately fall into these diseases, they are still so so loved by their family and by their s/o. to be loved despite your flaws is a beautiful thing.
i took off one star because i didn’t understand why kendra was present throughout the story. i get why she was there in the beginning- to show how bennet was wary and cautious when it came to love. but, when he saw her later, i guess it was to show how much he loved elodie? but still, it mentioned her calling him, and the topic of kendra was never really brought up again.
i really, REALLY liked this book and i think it was a perfect fall read !!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 26, 2023
I don't know if I can find the words to describe how amazing and beautiful this book truly is. Without thinking twice, I can easily say it is the best book I have ever read. I fell in love with all of the main characters. There were many parts throughout the story that made me laugh and even more that made me cry. I wanted to read this book because I heard it was disturbing and there are definitely parts of it that are but what I found in it was the absolute passion and affirmations of genuine true love that someone can have for another. The kind of love that u read about in fairy tales and the kind u hope u will be touched by in life. And no matter however long it lasts, it will forever change u. The kind of magic, passion and love that is in this book I will forever hold in my heart, Always. I won't give anything away but if u have read this book or are going to, I will tell u, chapter 27 is my favorite. My favorite sentence is on page 319 and my favorite paragraph is on page 252, second from the bottom of the page. When Hugo tells Bennet how Elodie will use his love hits me in the heart like a lightning bolt because I can relate so deeply to it. I truly cannot recommend this book enough.
Rating: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸+/5
Rating: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸+/5
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