Reading may be going very slowly as a result of the heat wave and also just generally being tired, but I have heard such good things about this that I did my best to make sure I could enjoy this one. And hopefully I can start getting back into the swing of things!
We follow a young man who lives in a strange house full of rooms with statues. As far as he knows, this house is the whole world and he is on a quest for knowledge, working with a man who appears for regular meetings twice a week called The Other. Slowly, he realizes that not only is The Other not who he appears, but he is not the person he thinks he might be either.
This is exactly my kind of book. The narrator is unreliable not because he is actively lying but because he is in a perspective that has been manipulated and lied to. There’s a strange other world where the worldbuilding is light and not fully explained, letting a lot of questions and mysteries continue to exist throughout that do not ultimately matter to the plot, but are fun to fill in on your own.
The framing device of the journals is interesting, but it does highlight what I think might be a thing people may have trouble with: The voice of the lead. He does come across innocent and naive, which can be frustrating for some people but I really liked it given the context it was presented in.
Overall, really loved it! If you get the chance to read it, I would highly recommend it. It’s one of the few times I really like an award winning book, but it had to happen again at some point!