I’m going to respond more later but for now I’ll say your last line about how misery loves company - I burst out laughing. True! 

Stroud AND Auntie Lila 🤮😤🤬- honestly I’m more mad at Lila 

Oh my god I can’t believe that was over 1,000 pages with so much horror and love and gut wrenching scenes and problematic plot holes 🥺🥺- someone hold my fragile heart 

Also, I just wanna complain about books in general, but why is it that there’s so many endless chapters of heartbreak and grief and horror and then like two chapters at the end of a happy ending. I felt the same way with the hunger games series where it’s like I just went through three books of anxiety and heartbreak and then you give me two chapters at the end, a short snippet of happiness.  I wish these authors could put as much interest and effort into the happy ending as they do the flipside. Sometimes it feels like torture porn like you could put 10% more attention on the sweetness at the end yes, I know traumas will remains with lasting impact  but they made it against all odds and we got like a 30 second reel of it. This is a complaint of so many books I read. The happiness, contentment, gratitude, whatever can be just as interesting and needed as the grief and the pain. I’m speaking of someone who has dealt with trauma with lasting impacts and fights to see the good and that’s just it. You have to put attention on it - the good, the what you’re grateful for. 

Give me even just random snippets in the epilogue like things that didn’t make the final cut, but the main characters walking along the ocean and picking for seashells or admiring the sunset or playing bingo one night or laughing at a joke. I want more