I’ve paused reading *Empire of Silence* for now.
Not because I stopped liking it. I was actually really drawn into its melancholy, its slow burn, and Hadrian’s sense of displacement.
But the place I’m at in the book hit a raw emotional nerve. It brushed up against my own history of rejection, longing, and wanting to be seen.
Sometimes fiction doesn’t push you away. Sometimes it comes too close.


