I had so much hope this would be good.

This book goes from "I'm glad to have someone to share my pain with" to "I want to keep you as my property" with too many steps skipped over. A little less zero to a hundred and more twenty-five to a hundred. It almost works if you squint.

Agnes tells her mother she's gay in a funny way while a fruit peeler is passed around.

I don't really care about the big part of the book dedicated to "what have you done today to deserve your eyes" where Agnes focuses on her eyes and not her other senses or maybe a working tongue, teeth that are healthy, hands, ears, a nose, any of that? Just her eyes. It's a really fucked up mentality but okay.

In so many words. 'My Mom found out I'm gay and this apple peeler is a family heirloom to remind me of her disowning me' is such a wild plot.

Now after that we find out the objective of girl who doesn't matter, Zoey, is to dominate someone else and treat them like a sex puppy. Ew. Then she says like a mother with a child. EW. Stop making it worse.

This devolves into Zoey controlling when she can bathe, eat, what she can do. It's a devolving mess of shock and horror because why not do that? It's a disappointing unraveling of a book.

It could be horror if things were better paced but here it's certainly not. It's a bit of shock content but not the right amount.

1.5 stars. You had me and you dropped me. ( )

Such a dark, disturbing, quick read. ( )

I honestly don’t know what to think of this. It was so visceral and gross, but endearing and strange.

The relationship between the characters was the part I had the most trouble with, being submerged in 2020s where online relationships can mean certain death…the trust they gave very quickly was odd for me, so I had to suspend my disbelief about that. ( )

i dont even know what to say honestly ( )

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Eric LaRocca has a way with words that I find disturbing, enthralling, and endlessly enjoyable to read. He's easily an auto-buy author for me, and he's just getting started!

With this story Eric turns his talents to the epistolary form; a medium that is underutilized, likely because it's so hard to get right. I mean how well can one create complex characters, inspire awe and dread in the reader, and convey a full range of emotions only through written correspondences (in this case emails and chat messages)? In this case, the answer is VERY well. Very well indeed.

The basic premise is that one character is wanting to sell an antique apple peeler, and the other character is an interested buyer. What follows is a tale of loneliness, codependency, and sadism that starts out innocently enough and turns into something truly horrific by the end. Eric takes his time with the pacing, allowing us to really get to know these characters and be pulled into their web of communication. And the times he shows restraint from graphic details only serve to make the times he doesn't that much more disgusting and alarming. Seriously, there is one scene in particular where I almost put the book down.

I loved this story, loved the way it was written, loved these sad characters, and loved the disturbing twists along the way. Highly recommend! ( )