maybe more 3.5 stars?
not sure.

there are incredible moments in the book, beautiful quotable sentences and things being said in ways that i think many people could point to and say „that’s what i mean!“ „that’s what i wanted to say!“ because this book has a way with words that is raw and honest, sometimes almost brutally so, but because it’s so real about it, it fits.

i also think the main character gifty is great. she is an incredibly smart and thoughtful person. she can be mean, both in spirit and in actuality (i think that only makes her more realistic), she struggles and builds herself back up. she wants to be loved and seen and cherished but at the same time she has no idea how to achieve those things because nobody taught her how.

it’s also a great book about grief and losing people.
it shows struggle, trauma and feelings very realistically.
it shows that grief is not something that just goes away after a few days or weeks, but that sometimes it takes years or is with you your entire lifetime.
sometimes grief can be your motivator.
or it can be your breaking point.
sometimes it can be both, one after the other or all at the same time.

and grief is not always just losing someone to dead, but can be a combination.
losing the affection of someone.
losing a person because the leave.
losing someone else to their grief or trauma.

all of those elements of the book i found great.

what i didn’t like, and it started to really bother me in the last 1/3 of the book, was the constant back and forth in time.
it’s effective.
but it’s done too often and sometimes almost as if there was a rush to jump back and forth so that neither section felt well done but simple rushed overall.

it also took me out of the stories a bit because after a while, knowing what happens to everyone... i honestly didn’t care to read about those struggles anymore. it felt unnecessarily repetitive. and in many ways it was repeating those similar moments over and over.
and again that can be effective. if it’s done well. but for me especially in the last half of the book it didn’t feel that way anymore.

all in all it’s a good book.
it has great writing and an even better character but the plot and structure had its struggles for me.