I received this book on a read to review basis from NetGalley. Thanks to the author, Emma Cline, and the publisher, Random House, for this opportunity. 
 This is historical fiction at its finest! This book aroused not just a keen sense of character and setting with its evocative imagery and poignant writing, but an entire era; an entire generation of people that are now almost lost to the world! 
 This is the story of the dark underworld of the 'swinging 60s', so revered in both memory and passed down recollection. This is the story of what happens when freedom is brought to a world with little conception of what can happen when that freedom is tested to its limits. This is the story of Evie Boyd: representative of a generation of those who slipped through the gaps. 
 The dark, disturbing and often sexual undertones of this book were penned with such a grace and beauty as to bring light to what would otherwise be an amphibological read. This compelled me from the beginning and that had as much to do with the fast-paced plot and flawed, yet real, character creation as it was to do with the allure of the writing that I felt reverberate in my heart with each well-placed phrase. 
 This book is a heart-wrenching story, no denying, but there was beauty present in amongst the bitterness and chaos. There was, although ill-gained and perilous, the joy experienced at the first taste of freedom. The allure of female friendship, both obsessive and life-saving, were explored. Relationships, in their conception and elimination, were often linked to the birth and death of another. Joy and pain, disaster and success - all emotions are inexplicably linked to their binary here as none can exist in its extremes without the presence of its other. 
 For each shadowy corner of history this book excavated, it did so with a light that illuminated the darkness within. The unfathomable depths this book dives to is beyond my feeble powers to put into words. It is as dark as it is beautiful and as powerful as it is sublime. The term unputdownable finally has its definition.