Rarely do I DNF a book. Simply not finishing a read is something I cannot wrap my head around, at least for me. If it works for you, great. But I do not DNF. Or rather, it is extremely rare. I dnf’d Jessica Gross’s Open Wide when I reached page twenty. I enjoy insane first person narration. Make her a sexual deviant? Okay. Bring on the madness, tension, and “I could wear your skin” lust. This? Yeah, it’s a hard pass for me.
I imagine Gross was swinging for the fences for shock value and really leaning into reactions like mine when she wrote the paragraph about the narrator’s sexual “ritual” involving her dog. It was enough for me to immediately close the book and nope outta there. I will never read another book by Gross.
A Girl Named Tommi 