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So the ending didn’t satisfy me, but it did seem … lifelike?

I’ve known people like Matt. I and some of my friends have dated people like Matt. The real-life arc for those stories is just as meh in the end as Fabry’s, so it felt very true, but not incredibly meaningful. In fiction there’s an opportunity to do better that I wish Fabry had taken advantage of.

The setups and payoffs weren’t honest. The things we expected because Fabry told us to expect them fell flat, and the things we got didn’t have enough background to mean much when they arrived.

There is a lot of wasted potential here. I think Fabry has the talent to do it right though, and that’s maybe the most disappointing thing about the ending. Overall I’d give it a 3 star rating. For me it was very much in the middle, with Fabry’s skilled descriptions and ability to tell a story that really felt like it might have happened balanced out by some confusion of plot and unfulfilled promises of his own to the reader.