It’s a story about family, betrayal, odds and love. Spun in a way that is both a commentary on life as it can actually look like, ugly and greedy, yet also wonderous and worth living, and what it’s hoped to look like.
What the author excelled at, in my opinion, is authenticity. Life is seldom split in black and white. There’s mostly always different shades of grey we have to ‘deal with’, and she depicted this so gracefully and graciously.
To have a father who has another wife and child somewhere else can’t be easy. The fact that he loved both of his daughters the same and maybe even loved both of his wifes doesn’t make his adultery right. But those two things can co-exist. He can have been a good father to both of the girls and yet not a very good husband.
It’s the thoughts and questions this book kicked off that made it so enjoyable. This, and the engaging way it was written in. The suspensefulness the story was told in was something I hadn’t anticipated at all, but loved even more for it.
I don’t want to give away too much which is why I’ll leave it at that, but I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes to grapple with moral questions, and who enjoys authentic, powerful and climactic writing.