Can I be honest? I thought this book was extremely underwhelming. 

On the surface it has everything I like- I had just given another interconnected short story collection a 5 star rating. I usually give these books around a 4 star rating (more if I really like them) but I felt like this format did not do this book and its ideas justice. 

We follow 12 women, many of them mother-daughter pairs, and they all connect and interweave somehow. 

My first problem with the execution of this book is how similar a lot of these characters and their relationships are to one another. Yes, a lot of them have different experiences and backgrounds, but a lot of them share stories- which is part of the point of the book but I think when you have a large cast of characters, the point was read to you like 100 pages in. There are also a bunch of characters who show up in a bunch of the stories who don’t narrate themselves and I found it really hard to follow them (I can’t imagine reading this book over a long period of time, I read like 75% of it in one day). 

I also think the stories themselves are way too long. There are mini chapters within each story, which really complicates the format of each story, again making them harder to remember. Its hard because all of these characters are deep and complex, but its hard for me to relate and feel emotional for them. I think Evaristo would have benefited from either shortening the scope and detail of the stories or focusing on only half of the cast. 

That being said, I think I would enjoy this a lot more on a re-read, but again the first read is kind of painful to go through. I can definitely see this being the type of book where you gain something new each time. I also really liked the prose for the most part, and I thought the punctuation style really helped with the flow of the book and dramatize some scenes. It was very readable, in my opinion. I can see the genius here, but maybe it isn’t for me or it just hasn’t clicked yet.