Brandon Taylor's linked stories move between quiet observation and sudden emotional exposure, tracing young people reckoning with desire, family, and the gap between what they want and what they can hold. Each piece stands on its own but accumulates into something heavier. The prose is restrained on the surface and bracing underneath, so the brief reading time lingers long after the last page.

Toltz writes in a breathless, digressive, darkly comic first person that makes the whole thing feel like a confession you can't put down. The Dean family saga careens through crime, philosophy, rivalry and affection, all filtered through a narrator who is funny, self-aware and quietly heartbroken. If you like novels where the voice is the real event, this one stays with you.