My Rating: 4 stars
What I loved about the book was the story itself as well as the writing. For a debut novel, I have to say that the author M.L. Stedman did an amazing job (I, for one, was definitely shocked to find out that this was the author’s first book!). The writing was beautiful and there was a good mix of dialogue from the characters and forward-driving plot elements as well as descriptions of the setting that adequately established each scene without going overboard. There was a complexity to the storytelling in that the story was told from multiple perspectives, with all the characters – even the minor ones – getting the chance to give their point of view, yet these perspectives did not distract from the story in any way, since all of them tied back to the main story. In fact, I felt that telling the story in this way actually added to the emotional intensity and overall impact this story had.
The ending was another area where Stedman did an excellent job and again made it hard for me to believe that this was her first book. Well-crafted endings are hard to come by (whether in books, movies, television series, or the like) and for me especially, I’ve encountered too many instances where a well-written story completely unravels with a poorly written ending, which I find extremely frustrating. For me, the ending to this book was “perfect” in the sense that it fitted in extremely well with everything that had occurred in the story – the author did not try to force the ending to go in a direction that would have completely contradicted the rest of the story, which I definitely appreciated given how easy it would have been to go this route due to the moral ambiguity of the characters and the story itself.
In terms of what I hated about the book – well, pretty much it was the characters, primarily the two central characters Tom and Isabel. Ok, I guess in the case of Tom, I didn’t really hate him but rather I was frustrated with him for most of the story, especially all those times when he would give in to Isabel’s whims against his better judgment and put himself in tough/risky positions that I felt weren’t really worth the consequences that would for sure follow. The one character in this book that I hated with a passion was Isabel. While it’s true that Isabel had suffered through a lot of hardship and in a sense, all of that plus her circumstances of being isolated from the rest of the world played a huge role in shaping the person she eventually became, I found it very difficult to sympathize with her for some reason. Normally I am able to find at least one or two redeeming qualities in a character like hers and rarely would I have such strong disgust for a main protagonist in a story, so in a way, I was surprised myself at how much I detested Isabel, to the point that I could not compel myself to find one reason to like her, even up until the end. Perhaps it is the way Isabel was portrayed in the story and the juxtaposition of Tom’s character and how much his moral compass had changed after he met Isabel. With all that said though, I do agree that the portrayal of almost all the characters in this book was realistic and truly brought to light the flaws of human nature.
Regardless of how I felt about the book, I definitely recommend it as a book that is absolutely worth reading. I’m sure each person will get something different out of the book – some may love it, some may hate it, some may be somewhere in the middle (like me). I would say read this with an open mind (all the way to the end though, because the whole story has less impact if not read to the end) and see where it leads you.
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