Review: All Things Cease to Appear

5 stars. Wow, how brutal was this? I can't believe I went from the magic of Daevabad to All Things Cease to Appear. Guess it's true: I really do read everything I can get my hands on. And you know what? I loved it just as much. This is one of the most harshly human stories I've ever read, and also a lot of other things: a pageturner; a character study; a mystery. There's a murder, and a small town, and a marriage, and it takes those familiar ingredients and bakes something truly special. Painfully, sharply special. Haunting in every meaning of the word.

This book really sneaks up on you, and I highly, highly recommend going in blind, so I won't summarize except to say, broadly, that this book is about a young couple that moves into a house with a past in a small town. But it really is about so much more than that - grief, hope, despair, love, faith, art, belief, loyalty, and betrayal. Tragedy. Joy after tragedy. Arrogance. The hunt. Rage. Peace. And so much more.

By the time it ended, my heart was in my throat. Sometimes it's hard to turn my analytical brain off, but this book washed over me to the point of serious emotional investment. I ached for these characters and I felt connected to them - the female ones, particularly, dug under my skin and will probably live there for awhile. They made interesting, different choices, and pursued unusual paths, which lent itself to the plot but also a sense that this story is real. It feels like real life. I think I fell in love with each of them, a little. For whatever that's worth.

I really commend Elizabeth Brundage for taking a familiar skeleton of a story and painting its image in a new light. The way things unfold and the way she writes about the in-between spaces and the way she leaves nobody untouched and the way she works through darkness and light and the way things unfold ... it's absolutely brilliant. I want to read it again so I can sift through the sand more carefully; the first read was too white-knuckly, in a good way. I need to think about it some more and maybe, if I’m lucky, discover some of its secrets.

Flagging this for my best of the year list, for sure.

All Things Cease to Appear on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads