My Absolute Darling

by Gabriel Tallent

First published 2017

Turtle Alveston can handle any weapon her father keeps mounted on their wall. At fourteen, she tracks rabbits through the forest, hones knives to razor sharpness, and sets broken bones. Her daddy tells her he loves her above all else. He promises never to let her go. Yet Turtle struggles to understand why she feels so disconnected from her classmates. She cannot grasp why affection and suffering blur together in her daily life. The prospect of forming a friendship terrifies her more than any physical danger she has faced in the wilderness. The adults who claim to protect her may pose the greatest threat. What she has learned to avoid might offer her only chance at freedom.

Genres: fiction, abuse, contemporary, adolescence, psychological-thriller, family-drama

Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking

Tropes: unreliable-narrator

417 pages · Hardcover · Riverhead Books

Content warnings: abuse, child-abuse, emotional-abuse, physical-abuse

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