A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked this book from BOTM back in January, but I ended up really enjoying it! I found it to be a poignant and deeply affecting novel that manages to pack a ton of emotional depth into just over 200 pages. Not only does it tackle complex themes of mental health, family dynamics, and grief with unflinching honesty, but it does so in a way that is both darkly humorous and heartbreakingly raw.

At the heart of this novel is Sigrid, a young woman who works at the Dollar Pal, a job she hates but also seems to accept as an inevitability seeing as how she never graduated from high school. Sigrid resists all expectations of traditional adulthood, but the novel quickly establishes that there is far more beneath Sigrid’s surface than aimless rebellion.

The entire first part of the book consists of Sigrid drafting various versions of her suicide note. This was such a bold and striking way to start the story because it pushed me into her psyche without any buffer or any sort of setup. We know from page one that Sigrid intends to commit suicide. We witness her thought process, her revisions, and her attempts to make her final words perfect. As the letters progress, we realize how unreliable Sigrid is in her narration. The things she leaves out, the details she glosses over or embellishes, the lies she tells, and the pain she doesn’t quite articulate build into a powerful, slow unraveling of her truth.

The novel then shifts to her sister Margit’s point of view, where even more of the pieces begin to fall into place. The dynamic between the sisters is complicated, messy, and painfully realistic. Margit is Sigrid’s total opposite, but as children, they were super close. Still, as they grew into young adults, their interactions became fraught with misunderstanding, frustration, and, at times, outright resentment. And yet, there is an undeniable bond between them, one that lingers even when words fail them.

Another very impactful character is Greta, Sigrid’s childhood best friend. Their friendship, once so full of reckless joy and youthful invincibility, has been fractured by addiction and loss. Greta’s absence in Sigrid’s life is a wound that has never healed. The more I learned about her and what happened to her, the more my heart broke. We never meet Greta, but despite this, her absence in Sigrid’s life is palpable.

What makes this book so special is its ability to make the reader feel deeply for Sigrid, even when she is at her most self-destructive. Her pain is real, tangible, and utterly human. Though I have never personally experienced suicidal ideation, I found myself understanding her struggles, especially in the way she grapples with her family dynamics. Austin crafts her with such care that she never feels like a caricature of depression – she is messy, flawed, sometimes frustrating, but always deeply, painfully real (and has quite the sense of humor).

Yes, this is a heavy book, but despite the novel’s heavier themes, Austin’s writing never feels melodramatic or overly sentimental. Instead, there is a quiet, aching beauty in the way she captures grief, depression, and the suffocating weight of small-town life. There is also an undercurrent of hope, especially in the way childhood imagination is woven into the sisters’ journey. The moments when Sigrid and Margit reconnect through shared memories of their fantastical childhood world offer glimpses of light amid the darkness.

In just over 200 pages, the author delivers a story more powerful than many character-driven novels twice its length. It is a stunning exploration of sisterhood, loss, and the fragile thread that keeps us tethered to life. Emily Austin has crafted something truly special, and I highly recommend this one. This is one of those books that demands to be sat with, thought about, and, for me, likely revisited in the future.

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