I'd Miss You Too Much If You Were Gone

I recently finished reading At the End of The River Styx by Michelle Kulwicki. This is OwlCrate's YA September book.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 4/5 stars

"Is saving someone you love worth an eternity of servitude?

To save his dying mother, Zan offered his life and centuries of servitude to the Ferryman. For 499 years of his 500-year curse, Zan has guided souls in the underworld to the edge of the River Styx so the Ferryman can devour them−and if Zan stops before his sentence is up, the Ferryman will eat his soul.

In Portland, Bastian is grieving. He barely survived a car accident that took his mother, and he is haunted by troubling dreams of a dark, flooded corridor. One night, a door appears in the endless corridor and Bastian walks into Zan's office, where he learns that he was supposed to die in the accident.

It should be easy for Zan to hand Bastian over like he has countless others. Only Bastian keeps disappearing before Zan can deliver him. The more they meet, the more they find they have in common and before long, their feelings for each other deepen. After an eon of loneliness, Zan can't bring himself to let Bastian die.

The boys borrow time hiding from the Ferryman, but only one of them can cheat death. Zan must decide if he's willing to give up his chance at life to save Bastian−and Bastian must decide if he's willing to keep living if it means losing Zan."

A brilliant idea, stunning execution, characters I felt for, though I will say the ending did not leave me as fulfilled as I wanted to be. The blurb for the book is a little misleading in terms of what actually happens, which left me a little disappointed. The themes of grief, loneliness, PTSD and trauma, however, are handled quite well. There are some elements that I felt didn't get enough explanation, though I could suspend disbelief on them. Overall, I felt this book had the potential to truly and completely dig my heart out of my chest, sew it back together, and put it back in again, but it just fell short of hitting that mark.

It was easy to like Zan and easy to like Bastian too. They're complex in the pain they're trying to heal through and their relationship is a slow burn that develops quite organically considering the circumstances. As a boy suffering from severe PTSD and grief, Bastian is certainly complex in a way we don't see often in male characters. He's not always likeable, however, and his relationship with his brother Dorian I felt was one of the weaker threads in the book. Thankfully, they're able to reconcile by the end, but I would honestly say I felt more for Dorian than Bastian in many cases! Zan is an impressive character as well. Written as a boy who is neither living nor dead, has spent 499 years in this between-world and learning about how the world has changed only through the memories of those who come to die is quite fascinating. The overwhelming loneliness he grapples with is so painful as well, but Michelle has written it in a way to keep the reader one step removed from feeling it fully, in my opinion.

Although this story is dual POV, we really end up more on Bastian's healing journey than Zan's (which is unfortunate). Bastian is grappling with the overwhelming grief of losing his mother and is not coping well, truly believing he should have died instead. Marked by the Ferryman for death, he ends up between the two worlds and keeps escaping before the Ferryman can take him. The story follows his journey of healing both inside Styx with Zan and outside with his life, his family, and ultimately learning how and to want to live again. Evenly-paced, it takes a few chapters to get into things, but it all happens quite quickly, although the relationship between Zan and Bastian is very slow burn and, in my opinion, we don't get enough of it before the end.

The Emotional intensity could have been much higher, but I felt in many ways the author kept us one degree removed from feeling the intensity of the pain that they're both feeling and healing through. To most pain I felt came from the ending, which didn't give me the full catharsis I was looking for in the end. Still, this is an emotional rollercoaster, so be prepared when you choose to read it.

I felt that there were missed opportunities. In the end, it didn't feel like a healing journey that was fully completed. The ending was half-happy, but after everything they'd gone through, the events by the end left me a bit frustrated because the whole book is set up as healing journey, so the lack of a full HEA didn't make sense for me. It gave the wrong message when juxtaposed with the healing themes presented by the book.

Check out At The End of The River Styx, and discover what happens when you getting marked for death by the Ferryman.

Happy Reading :)