Scary. Thrilling. Intriguing.

Emma is hitchhiking her way to a better place after horrific violence and a tragic life. She stumbles upon a nasty stranger and barely escapes. She finds herself in an abandoned town where a young boy in a tinfoil mask named Earl greets her. They form a friendship, but Earl's strange and horrific life begins to mirror Emma's... Now, if only the two of them can get out alive.

This book is a thrill ride packed with violent horror and mystery. I was glued to this book and wanted to see if Emma and Earl got the life they deserved (a much better one). Rachel Eve Moulton has quite the skill in writing these believable and empathetic characters. I felt so hard for their struggles, but I was happy they found each other.

Bonus points for weaving honest LGBTQ representation into the story and not making it a plot point.

Four out of five stars! ( )

This was an intriguing novel that was not exactly what I was expecting from the description, but by the time I realized that, the story had already sucked me in and I had to find out more about Emma and why she seemed to be on her own with a horrid scar on her stomach from pulling out her own stitches. It's not clear at first why Emma so desperately wants to get to the Badlands or what it has to do with her past, but she is obviously willing to risk her life to make it there. When she ends up having to run from the man who promised to take her there, she finds herself in a deserted ghost town where she meets a troubled child with a past even more tragic than her own. With a blizzard on the way and a deranged man after her, Emma's desire to live awakens in ways she never thought possible.
I received an advance copy for review. ( )

I'm a little conflicted about this book because, overall, I found it extremely good, bleak as hell (that's a compliment, by the way), and very well written.

I have to say (without spoiling anything), that I had two issues with the back end of the book. The first is the dumb decision that occurred with the last visit to the underground area that I won't say any more about (you'll know it when you get there). No amount of justification will convince me that the decision chosen would have ever been made by any person with a sliver of intelligence.

And the second was, Moulton drew out the ending far longer than she should have, in my opinion. All the dramatic tension was gone, but she kept writing...

Regardless, the four stars is for the trip up to that point, and for the fact that, even while being delivered a bit of a mess toward the end, the author did, at least, write it really well.

Will I read anything else my Rachel Eve Moulton? Hell yes. I truly believe she's an author to watch. ( )

I'm really glad I didn't start reading this before bedtime because this story got intense real fast. A teenage girl hitchhiking to the Badlands in South Dakota gets herself out of one messy situation and lands in an even worse one. She runs out of gas in a deserted old mining town far up the mountain with a blizzard on the way. Then she discovers the place isn't quite deserted. I'm not going to say anymore. I didn't know anything about this going in, and I think that's for the best. Moulton's writing is compelling--I finished this in two days--and parts are downright terrifying, while other parts are simply heartbreaking. A nice discovery, courtesy of the Shirley Jackson Award shortlist. ( )

Thanks to NetGalley for my ARC.

Moulton writes beautifully. Moulton writes beautifully about wildly terrible and violent things. Tinfoil is a full on exploration of what is evil on evil acts and evil motives and on violence and horror and what really is horrific. Tinfoil Butterfly unwinds the story of Emma, a hitchhiker, who herself is trying to outrun violence in her own past who after a particularly violent run in with a driver she encounters finds herself trapped in a ghost-town where she meets Earl a strange child who wears the novel's titular Tinfoil mask. Things only get worse and more troubling from here. The story absurdly unwinds as Emma tries to care for Earl and how the both of them must live in the violent world that they find themselves in and that to find peace the must encounter and live with and engage in increasingly violent acts in order to find peace.

TInfoil Butterfly is beautiful and shocking and troubling. It explores themes of love and regret and abuse and loss and evil and violence and how we all deal with these things when our lives are entangled with others whose lives are full of these things as well.

A worthwhile read for those who are ready to come to grips with reading passages of intense violence. ( )