More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
But laptops with evidence, a notebook under the bed titled Notes From a Psychopath—those are irreplaceable too.
The firefighters’ uniforms are charcoal-streaked, their faces exhausted. One is coughing so hard he’s leaning over and puking on the sidewalk.
Um is he not wearing an oxygen tank?
They crouch to peer in the hole, a hush expanding between them as they understand what they’re looking at. A human head is buried in the rose garden.
It’s not just looks, either. Eliza is stamped with a darkness and disorganization that are all her own.
Despite Olivia’s natural beauty, her radiant sunshiney charm, she’s a nerd at heart.
And he’s hot in a special way—like he grew from an awkward, gangly teen to tall, dark, and handsome so fast even he isn’t aware of it yet.
She never calls it a trailer aloud, though. Her father takes pains to remind her that it’s a “mobile home park” and that it’s “just a house without a foundation”—a description haunted with a secondary meaning.
She says his first name, not Mr. Hunter, almost to test the boundary between them. To see if it bothers him. To see what it feels like. She likes that name, Carson, the way it curls in her mouth and rolls off her tongue.
The same trunk that once belonged to her mother, who’s now serving twenty to fifty years at Louisiana State Penitentiary for attempted homicide.
On paper, her life provoked envy but behind the façade, there was rot.
Her life was a nightmare pretending to be a dream.
The world suddenly feels manageable when you put it into boxes like that. What’s wrong with being put in a box? Why does everyone say it like it’s a bad thing? Boxes keep things organized, keep things contained.
The truth is, in the past few months, Ezra has started having secret feelings for Izzy … but they aren’t romantic. Sometimes he stares at her head and wants to know what her skull looks like under there.
But lately he’s started wondering if that isn’t his conscience. If it isn’t this innate thing inside him, but just some learned rules that he’s been blindly following all his life. Just an inner urge to people-please.
He walks to the front counter with his books and smiles at the librarian, noting to himself that his smile too is nothing but a learned twitch.
“Why are you so into psychopaths? Are you one?” “Keep bugging me and you’ll find out.”
She has an air about her like she shares a secret with the universe, her hazel eyes dancing with something akin to mockery.
As the car stays on, the chorus of “Gin and Juice” is too much to resist—Carson sings along with gusto until he notices a janitor glaring at him as he sweeps the sidewalk outside.
Not the janitor silently judging him LOL
As a former reporter and now a true crime writer, Carson is ever-aware of the fact that you never know what struggles people carry around with them.
Compliments: the lowest-hanging fruit of friendliness.
Carson has pored over gruesome crime scenes. Read police reports until he thought he’d go blind. Visited morgues a handful of times. This is worse. At least the dead aren’t lonely.
Sad, isn’t it? At the end of a life, people are so desperate for companionship they’ll talk about their greatest shame in exchange for a few intimate minutes of conversation with a stranger.
the case that jumpstarted his love of true crime: The Raven’s Landing Dismemberer.
God, what if the old woman keeled over right now? Wouldn’t that be just his luck?
Haha this made me chuckle.
Some people swallow their pride. Carson swallows his humiliation and it hurts like a sharp pebble on the way down his dry throat.
And then he drops that smile like the mask it is.
At sixteen, childhood already feels like so long ago. She’s starting to develop nostalgia for the time before the weight of hormones and loads of crap homework bogged her down.
it annoys her the way Olivia seems obsessed with this idea that Eliza’s family has everything, that they’re wealthy, that they have some perfect life. And knowing what she does about Olivia and what a little klepto she is, she can’t help but wonder if her friend can be trusted.
But what can Eliza say? No, you can’t spend the night, I’m busy doing absolutely nothing by myself.
Gir I feel you. Sometimes you just want to retreat into yourself
Olivia has this quality about her where she can just start chatting with anyone and put them at ease. But sometimes it edges almost on … Eliza doesn’t know what to call it, exactly. Flirtation? She notices it especially when Olivia talks to Carson or Ezra. It’s just a little bit too friendly.
I noticed it too and while I assume she had a crush on Ezra which makes flirtation susceptible, the overly intimate rapport with her bff's dad is just weird
She leans in close and adds, in an ear-tickling whisper, “Your secrets are my secrets.” But her assurance doesn’t get rid of that pit in Eliza’s stomach.
Olivia West hates her life almost as much as she loves herself.
she grabs the nearest butcher knife in the block. Olivia can’t count the number of times she’s wondered how different her life would be if her mother had twisted the knife in just a little deeper—but
To test the boundary between them, Olivia slips her hand on his arm and gives it a squeeze. He doesn’t flinch or withdraw. Doesn’t react at all.
There she goes being creepily inappropriate again .
“I can sense Satan around you,” he whispers. “Lingering. Like a black cloud. When there’s trouble, you know I can tell, Olivia Wren, because you’re a part of me.
Living with him is like trying to guess the next plot twist of the worst novel in the world.
She knows, like everything else in her life, if she wants something to happen, no one is going to do it for her, not even God, not even the devil. She’s going to have to kill him herself.
“How did you know his password?” “I’ve seen him unlock it.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s 6-9-6-9.” Carson gives a knowing and approving nod. “Classic.”
Lmao wooooww
“When Ezra got fired from the butcher shop,” she reminds him, in a whisper. There’s a white-haired couple now seated next to them, dressed up as if they just came from church. “For masturbating in the meat locker.”
Eww WTH
So he’s masturbating in meat lockers and he’s looking up pictures of torture. Does that hurt anyone?” The woman at the next table over gives them a steely look. “Shhh.” Angela kicks Carson under the table.
Lmao
The shock that zinged through her when she learned Olivia’s mother was serving time in prison for attempted homicide and her father is that unhinged alcoholic who yells at people about Satan on the corner of Dickinson and First—her
She grew up trying so hard to be good. But when she grew all the way up, she learned the truth: there’s no such thing.
Carson can never get over the fact that crickets are just yelling because they’re horny out of their minds. Good for you, little buddies. Go get it.
She put her cup to her lips and then seemed to think the better of it, putting it on the table and pushing it his way. “I shouldn’t take drinks from strangers.”
Haha I was literally thinking that during the start of this exchange
At first glance, Angela was a glowing, polished beauty queen. But that wasn’t what attracted Carson to her. He liked the sarcastic edge in her voice, the wry half-smile on her lips, her dry wit.
“Only took me about three minutes to know I’d chase you anywhere,” he said. It was crazy. Carson knew he was like that—he saw something he wanted, and he would go after it with a relentless hyperfocus.
He wants to play with that. Play with seeing if guilt is something he can remove from himself like a sick and useless organ.
Turns out that Ezra might have had the guts to bludgeon an innocent creature, but he doesn’t have the guts to talk shit to his father.
