Third and final of this series. Thankfully. The backdrop of a desolate United States offered an interesting yet somewhat overused setting, though Portland, Maine was a nice change from the ever-always New York or Los Angeles in these YA novels.

The love story gave us everything love masquerades as with very little in the way of real love —apart from the gradual awakening of Hana who learns love, repentance, and humility. Her voice was the favoured in this novel—at least for me. I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting to slap Lena. Yes. Lena was the one needing slapped here for the way she treats people. Considering her loveless childhood, though, I’m extending her the long rope of a second (or third) chance. Her character is shallow and flighty, blindly self-centred, quick to react and slow to forgive. She shows very little maturity or growth, and it seems all the wonderful lessons she’s learned (in the trials and victories of book#2) have been easily forgotten with the next discomfort.

Some of the writing is certainly very poetic and compelling, but the lack of maturity in these characters (both adults and teens)—while it might ring true of some teens—offers zero challenge of hope to the reader regardless of age. Lena is never invited to address or question her own fickle heart, quite the opposite; she relies on it and follows it through all the flimsy and vacillating emotions it experiences, trusting it as if it was the quantifier of all goodness and truth. Silly girl.

If Oliver hadn’t been trying to allegorise a vital message, I’d have been lightly entertained. In the end, the message gets chewed up and spit out irreverently (though sometimes phrased in aesthetic beauty) by characters who need to hear it rather than be the illustrations for her to preach it.