I feel like reading this novel was a half-complete experience. I enjoyed so much about it - the tender relationships between its characters, the simpleness and subtleties of language at times - but I also felt like these beautiful branches, which led me deeper into the story, were bare of leaves and occasionally snapped and fell to the ground. The title didn't quite fit the story, there seemed too many layers (too much tragedy) and too little exploration of the main character herself with so much of the attention placed on other characters around her. All of this doesn't detract from the fact I kept returning to the story knowing it was going to lead me to more tenderness, I just wish it could have taken me there on a sturdier, stronger, less peculiar path.