Title: Sign Here 

Author: Claudia Lux

Rating: 3.5/5

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            There are going to be spoilers because I had some feelings about this book and some of them weren’t great. They are my opinion and that’s how it always has been and always will be, no one is going to be sending me books anytime soon. I can pretty much guarantee that because I don’t hold punches. 

            Seriously, if you want to read this book, I will see you with the next post, if you don’t want the whole thing spoiled, I will see you later, bye. 

            So, where do I start? This book was marketed by Book of the Month as a tale about hell, someone living and working there and working toward a promotion. I didn’t know it was also going to be a murder mystery with like teenagers being killed either by murder or accident. Like there were so many twists and turns in this that I felt like I was getting whiplash.

            The chapters were super short and they switched between like a half dozen or so characters and that was just too many. I didn’t really get that feeling of much of the story being in hell or who the main character actually was. I didn’t find half of the characters likable. I wanted to like this book so much, but there was like references almost to grooming teenagers and a lot of stuff that just rubbed me the wrong way.

            Like the holy army militia thing that Cal grew up in and the story of her father, I get religious cults and extremism but all of that just felt so unnecessary. 

            This book felt like it was about a half dozen books all trying to be one book. If it was the story about hell, cool. If it was the story of the Harrison family and their clearly glaring issues, cool. Cal and her family dynamic about growing up in a religious cult where fighting was a rite of passage, cool. It was all of those things plus like some really unnecessary plot devices about cheating and manipulation. 

            With all of the shifting, with all of the almost lack of emotion in this book it just didn’t grip me, reading parts of it was a slog. 

            It all pretty much starts out with a murder, well, not all of it starts that way, but the Harrison family sections, it was an accident or maybe it wasn’t. I still have no idea, to be completely honest the whole storyline with Sarah and Gavin, that whole thing with Gavin that just hit me in all the icky places. Cheating is a pretty common trope in books but he seduced her to kill her child, to take revenge for the death of his sister. Like there was nothing solved. 

            I would have been so much more interested in the story involved with the underworld, with Peyote and Cal and the deals department, that would have been so much cooler and that’s what I thought I was getting because Book of the Month is pulling baits and switches on me this year it seems, which is annoying. 

            The narrative about self-harm and drug use, that hit me in a place that I don’t want to be hit, I never used drugs but I had some dark times as a teenager and I would have liked a trigger warning on that one. I would have also liked a trigger warning on a few other things throughout this book, but here we are. 

            I feel like I am just tearing this book apart, and I did like parts of it, but those parts were overshadowed by a lot of stuff that was really messed up. It left me more confused than satisfied at the end and that’s never fun when you are trying to love most of what you read. This left me underwhelmed.

            If you want to read about what else I have read this year you totally can; January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September.

            Alright, well, I will be back later in the week with another post so until then I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy. 

            -MJ