Kyle's world is upended when his father tells him that his mother is having an affair and they don't know what to do about it. He withdraws from everything except his cousin Emily. Can he find himself again after everything falls apart?

I jokingly call this the "cousin love" book. As someone who grew up with a lot of cousins, I do have relationships still with many of them. They never hit the intensity of this relationship though, which at the least is kind of obsessive and at worst borders on romantic. I'm not sure this is what Zarr meant, but the writing about Kyle's relationship with Emily doesn't differ that much from the writing about his relationship with Nadia, which makes it hard to differentiate between the two (unless the point is that Kyle is that obsessive about everyone?) If the protagonist was a woman, would it be different? I also had a bit of a hard time with Jacob, like of course Jacob was the kid.

One thing I do think this book covers very well is the process to accepting that your family is flawed and eventually you need to accept that. Not everyone needs to accept it in that dramatic a fashion (and quite frankly, I feel Kyle's parents deserve Patty Chase Awards for Bad Parenting, to use Forever Young Adult terminology.) I also think everyone in this family needs a lot of therapy. I too lost a place I spent much of my childhood, and I kind of wish I had a last farm week experience with it. So those parts really resonated with me.