This book and I got off to a really bad start. Within the first few opening pages, I was furious at the main character and her mother, wanted nothing more to do with either of them, and was sitting in tears at a table in the food court at work. But I forced myself to go on, and while I'm glad I finished the book, it fell short for me. I'm afraid my initial reaction to the book soured it a bit for me, which isn't really the book's fault, but I'll try to go into what I liked and didn't like, aside from the book's opening.
My main issue was with the main character, Edie. Over time, I've come to realize that the main character in a book doesn't necessarily need to be likable for me to enjoy the book, and Edie definitely fits the bill of an unlikable character. She's angry, lashes out often, and judges others pretty harshly. There have been plenty of other characters like her, characters that I have grown to like in spite of their cruelty to others, but I didn't feel that way with Edie for a long time. The Edie we see in some scenes seems completely separate from the Edie in other scenes, and I had a hard time reconciling the two. I wish we as readers got to know Edie better over the course of the book, that we got to know more of what her life in Canada was like, just... more.
The story itself, Edie aside, is enjoyable, but I wish it had been a bit longer. There's a lot of stuff crammed into this book, especially into the last few pages, and it felt a bit overwhelming. The book brings up some really good points, and it would have been nice for a lot of those issues to be given more page time or otherwise explained in a bit more detail. I think they would have had a much bigger impression that way. At times, it felt like the reader was getting too much at once, and other times, it was very frustrating to get little hints of what was going on when we were fairly late in the story and wanted to know much more.
I enjoyed Payne's writing quite a bit. I finished the book fairly quickly, despite my initial reaction, and would definitely read another one of her books in the future.
I received a copy from this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book!