CW: abuse, domestic violence, death/murder, attempted suicide

Recently I’ve seen Amber’s novels throughout the book community, and my interest was piqued. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this one as much as I’d hoped to.

A novel with topics like this one — domestic violence, family, moving on — should be emotionally charged. It should make you feel things, make you empathize. 95% of the time, I didn’t feel anything. The situation Brooke and her family were in, before and after the murder, was horrible. No doubt about that. But the only thing I consistently felt while reading was secondhand embarrassment regarding some of things Brooke did and said.

This book is marketed as lgbtq+, and while there was a slow-burn f/f romance, I feel like I was cheated out of a gay story. The gayer the better, right? Brooke and Dani didn’t get much page time as a couple, and in the second half Brooke treated Dani so terribly. They avoided each other until the end, when they seemed to make up and tentatively get back together. I know each story is different, but if a story is marketed as lgbtq+, I’d like the relationship to be at least one of the main focuses.

I feel like every character but Brooke was kind of brushed aside and not fully developed. Even she didn’t make sense all the time. At the start, she was extremely studious and dedicated to school, whereas in the second half, she skipped school frequently and seemed to stop caring. I can completely understand why she’d lose focus, given the situation, but at the same time, she didn’t even try to recover. It felt out of character for her, since her studious tendencies were so thoroughly established in the beginning.

Lastly, I want to say that I was hoping for a bit more regarding the familial relationships. The way they were written definitely seemed realistic; I know some families lash out and break apart in rough times rather than coming together to help each other through it. However, in the middle, the siblings mostly ignored each other, and in the end there was only some healing and reconnecting. Each of them lived somewhere else; I don’t even know where Aaron was. I liked their grandmother, though, and toward the end Brooke’s relationship with her mother and her sister respectively improved.

I know I had a lot of criticism, but ultimately this wasn’t a bad novel. I think that in many places, the execution left more to be desired. Despite that, this novel has important themes and I’m glad I read it. I’ll be picking up Amber’s other book in the future.