negative space (book)

rating

starstarstarstarstar

date

09 february 2026

genre

horror

author

b.r. yeager

the setting of negative space is bleak: a slowly decaying town in new hampshire, a suicide epidemic, disaffected teens, a hallucinogenic drug that may or may not have actual supernatural components to it. the book follows three teens in rapidly switching first-person POVs, jill, ahmir and lu, charting the trajectories of their own lives as well as how these intersect with tyler, the fourth major character of negative space, whose point of view we are never privy to.

all four of these have their fair share of problems and they all cope in unhealthy ways. jill is in a tumultous relationship with tyler, ahmir also is sexually involved with tyler in a weirdly detached way, lu is a closeted trans girl in a controlling religious household and tyler collects bad coping, drug issues and self-harming behavior like he's trying to win a competition. lu aside, all of them have some kind of drug dependency going on. but it's especially pronounced with tyler, who's hooked on something called WHORL, which as far as i can tell best can be compared to salvia.

there are multiple things i struggled with making my way through the book. one thing that was difficult to deal with was how detached the characters seem - especially jill and ahmir - which made it hard to truly follow their motivations and feelings. the second thing relates to the times when the book enters a more surreal space, which happens frequently enough but especially often towards the end. these sequences are framed as dreams/hallucinations but there's also the heavy implication that they are not just that. the use of WHORL is ritualized by tyler and later on lu and jill and what first seems like a hallucination can also be understood as a widening of consciousness, but personally for me it was hard to get a handle on how this was executed. or put more simply, at some points especially in the second half of the book i had no idea what the hell was going on anymore.

despite complaining about their detachment, i think the characters are written well and especially lu has a very distinct and interesting narrative voice. the complicated dynamics between the main characters are built up well; they're all somehow connected to tyler, but not necessarily friendly with each other. the atmosphere that is built up is very *chef's kiss* at times (the descriptions of the humid summer in the first chapters put me right there) and - as somebody who's not gen z - these characters feel authentically like zoomers.

in the end, there remains some disconnect for me with what's going on in negative space. for example i didn't quite understand how the suicide epidemic fit into everything (aside from enhancing the oppressive bleakness of it all, but it's so over the top - at times there's multiple deaths by characters only namedropped that single time in a single day - that it loses that effect, too) except for the implication that it's also in connection with the mystery drug, yet it's never made clear enough for me how and why this connects. as i said, sometimes i think i just don't fully get what's going on. interesting read though, with only some tiny pockets of hope in a sea of despair.