This book hit me in ways I didn’t expect. Medusa follows Peter and his daughters as they flee from something dark and unspoken, snow chasing them the whole way. At first, it feels like a family story. A man on the run, a diner breakfast, a reunion with a father he barely knows. But then it starts flipping back in time, and suddenly we’re deep in the cold heart of academia, with radical college students, cult-like movements, and ideas about truth, power, and rebellion that start out philosophical but turn dangerous. It’s part thriller, part tragedy, and part fever dream about how ideas can twist people up until they can’t tell the difference between salvation and destruction.

I’ve gotta say, I didn’t expect the writing to be this sharp. Farnworth’s style feels cinematic, like you can see every snowflake, every cracked diner mug, every shiver of guilt and paranoia. He writes winter so well that I swear I felt cold reading it. The dialogue’s raw and real, especially between Peter and his kids. It’s tender and sad and kind of haunting. But the college sections? Those got under my skin. The way Meddy talks, so sure of herself, so magnetic, it reminded me of that one person in college who could talk you into anything. I loved how the book didn’t tell me exactly what to think about her or Peter; it just dropped me into their choices and let me sit in the mess with them.

Honestly, there were times it made me mad. I wanted to shake the characters, tell them to stop before they burned it all down. But that’s what made it work for me. It’s messy and uncomfortable and feels real, even when it’s surreal. I liked how it asked big questions without pretending to have big answers. It’s about belief, guilt, the weird ways people chase meaning, and how sometimes we destroy what we love trying to make sense of it all.

Reading Medusa felt a lot like diving into Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, that same haunting mix of intellect, obsession, and the slow, beautiful unraveling of people who think they’re smarter than their own downfall. If you like stories that start small and snowball into something much bigger, something that rings in both your heart and your head, this book’s worth your time. It’s for readers who like dark winter tales and flawed, complicated people.