Is the controversy based in founded information? Absolutely. Was this a good read? Yes. Those are the basics. This is admittedly an overly dramatic story, but on an entertainment level I found it enjoyable. It is painfully tragic, sometimes very uncomfortable, & terribly gripping. The characters are caricatures, but the writing is beautiful & lyrical (despite the ugliness of the narrative).

Had there been no controversy to reflect on, I simply would have enjoyed the fluidity and lyrical writing, been impressed by the atmospheric creation of characters and setting, and simply been left somewhat breathless.

In fact, with regard to the controversy, I was prepared to be supportive of the author after hearing her statement at the end of the audiobook, but was then both disappointed and aggravated by some of its content after a bit of research. The author states that her husband was an undocumented immigrant when they were dating. The way this is written and the fact that it is followed up by the statement that the author's grandmother was originally from Puerto Rico led me to believe that her husband was from Mexico. In some way, I felt this perhaps gave the book a bit more authenticity and weight and thought that perhaps the critics had been too quick to judge. However, my assumptions were incorrect.

The author's husband is, in fact, from Ireland. Discovering this fact made me quite upset as I feel like this was purposefully meant to mislead readers in some kind of justification. Some readers have called this gaslighting and I have to agree that it falls in those lines. Had this one statement been clear, perhaps the amount of controversy would have been slightly less.

I am angry that such a move by both the author and the publishing company have tainted what is otherwise a good novel in the sense of being creative, relatively well-written, and attention grabbing. My rating is based solely on my reading experience rather than my opinion of the controversy or my own emotional reaction to the author's note.