All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood

Living in meth-fueled squalor, eight-year-old Wavy bonds with Kellen, an adult ex-con. This decade-spanning narrative illustrates how severe isolation obscures the distinction between love and grooming.

This book contains: alcohol/addiction, addiction-driven transactional sex, anorexia/starvation as a coping mechanism, child abuse (severe), derogatory terms, drugs/addiction/dealing, dubious consent, explicit sexual activities/nudity, lying, mental illness, murder, neurodivergence, parental neglect (severe), pedophilia, potentially patently offensive content, potentially prurient content, profanity, racism, sexual assault, smoking, stealing, statutory rape and violence.