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Content snapshot
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Violence
A lot
Gun violence is listed as a graphic content warning by readers and the final movement turns on it
Language
A lot
Cursing throughout, flagged as moderate by reader content tags — the fifteen-year-olds talk like fifteen-year-olds and the adults are worse
Sexual Content
The core concern
Substance Use
A lot
Alcoholism among the adults and teenage drinking, tagged as moderate
Emotional Intensity
Gaslighting is the novel's method as well as its subject: the second section attacks the credibility of the first, and the reader is left uncertain whose account of the abuse to trust
What this book is about
Choi's National Book Award winner starts with Sarah and David's romance at an elite theater conservatory under the manipulative eye of Mr. Kingsley, then upends the account entirely partway through and reframes it again in a 2013 coda. Kirkus describes Kingsley controlling "the particular power dynamics of elite theater training" and holding power over his students' professional and social futures. Reader content warnings on StoryGraph are extensive: graphic adult/minor relationship, emotional abuse, gun violence, sexual assault, sexual content, and grief, with moderate alcoholism, cursing, misogyny, pedophilia, rape, sexism, toxic relationships, violence, and gaslighting. The Reading the End podcast states it plainly — the book includes underage sex, statutory rape, and sexual predation by a teacher.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Statutory rape and sexual predation of students by a teacher
Gun violence
Gaslighting and contested accounts of abuse
Reader Verification
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