We Can Never Leave This Place

I would first like to thank Eric LaRocca for providing me with an ARC of this novella via ebook in exchange for an honest review. This novella will be released on June 24th, 2022. I had really high expectations for this novella due to the fact that I rated the two LaRocca works that I've read previously 5 stars respectively; however, I feel that my expectations may have brought down my rating of this novella. This novella just seemed to drag on for me in the first 3/4s of the work; it wasn't bad... but it wasn't as good as I anticipated it being. It took me twenty days to read this novella that is less than 100 pages long; the other two LaRocca works that I've read were super quick reads for me, so I think the rate at which I read this shows just how slow the first 3/4s were for me. I really enjoyed the commentary on grief and generational trauma, and I think the reveal at the end was... oof, so wild! I truly loved the last quarter of the story, and I wish the entire novella had the same momentum. I'm still INCREDIBLY excited to read more from LaRocca, and I'm still a HUGE fan of his work. I think that there are elements of this novella that could work for others; the story just wasn't 100% my cup of tea.