‘Jiang has done something truly masterful here in that she leaves just enough blank space on the pages, and just enough secrets in the novella, for the curious reader to seek layers of meaning which may have not been intended or expected. This is a line only the best authors can walk, and it imbues their fiction with a timelessness and sense of resonance that many readers will find affecting, and the right reader might just call perfect.’

“Across the road, those who watch the vicarage’s transformation see windows beaming golden. Not only has the grin at ground level broadened, but the eyes are open and alight upstairs. A watcher may remark that after sleeping for so long, the building appears to have been roused from within.”

Ward understands the human relationships that underlie each passage, and seeds in her characters very real shortcomings that in time bear terrible fruit. The horror here is not fanged and leering, but that which lies at the heart of every person: the capacity to be horrendously cruel for a taste of crude power. It is a book where no one shines, and all victories are hard-won and bloody.

this iteration of [Nevill’s] formula feels like a polished, smartly-conceived story that plays out across a number of increasingly interesting layers.

Every character, setting, and arc is an askew, asymmetrical thing that shuffles at the edge of the reader’s perception showing a side that does not match its shadow.