When someone from the publisher reached out about Kaleidoscope, this line caught me: “This book is heart-wrenching and hopeful and the characters truly shine on the page. It’s one of those books where I wish I could read it again for the first time all over again. And I’m so happy that you get to.”
And I downloaded a copy almost immediately, but of course sat on it for a few months, allowing me to forget about the blurb and the subject and go into this completely blind.* This approach, if you’ve followed me for a while, sometimes works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it sort of worked mostly because the intro was a little abrupt and different from the rest of the story, but that’s on me, not the author.
When the publicist reached out to me about this one, I wasn’t sure I had the capacity, but it was five months before it was published so I figured I’d make time!*
I am NOT happy with this book. I 
Jim Grimsley is probably one of the most depressing writers I’ve ever read, and yet I keep going back to him every 5-10 years. Depressing may not be the correct descriptor, he just writes such desolate books and truly embraces the southern gothic style and maybe that’s what draws me to him?
We watched this adaptation on Netflix when it was first released and when I noticed the second in the trilogy was released I realized I wanted to go back and read the source. And really, there weren’t that many differences which was refreshing.