I received an ARC of this book from Henry Holt & Co. 

I definitely had a love/hate relationship with this one. It's pretty light on the plot, with one main plot point being the buildup to Hurricane Ike, but even that was over in two chapters before moving onto a few chapters of 'clean up'. It felt like it was lacking in suspense or drama or anything interesting, focusing more on the lives of the people than the devastation of the events (for the record none of the 18 mentioned characters die. One runs away. None are displaced. None have homes destroyed beyond water-damage that's typical from flooding. And if they are displaced, it's never mentioned.)

The prose was nice. Not very flamboyant, but is rather solemn, sometimes to its own detriment. On this front though, I feel a bit robbed, honestly. It had a lot of potential to be a highly emotional read, but all emotion seemed to be removed from the story, somehow. People say they're "angry" or "scared" but you just don't feel it. Beyond that, there is a lot of Spanish and Tagalog mixed in but they're generally typical words/phrases that are either translated in the text or used in a context where you don't really NEED to know what it means because it's a filler word/phrase like 'you see?' I liked it but there were some cases when it became overbearing.

Speaking of 18 characters - I counted, but I wouldn't be surprised if I missed some - it really did become too much. I read some reviews before starting this and thought "too many characters? is that possible?" It is. There are 12 characters that have at least one chapter in their POV and 6 characters I like to call 'fringe characters' who don't have a POV but are mentioned in several other POVs. Each chapter is from a new perspective, sometimes not even along the slowly moving linear timeline but rather a recollection, that somehow will tie a character to one of the 3 main characters (Carly, Jess, the grandmother Magdalena) whether it be friendship, relatives, or the guy that had an affair with the grandmother back in the 90's. It does well to show that a community is comprised of so many little connections but with the shifting POVs and lack of plot to bring focus to events and fringe characters, it becomes muddled. I had trouble remembering who was who and had to flip back many times to find the one sentence or two when a character relation was mentioned in a different POV because the current POV made it sound like I should know who the mentioned character is.

The epilogue is written like a book's appendix. I did not enjoy that at all. In fact I almost skipped it because I didn't think it was actually part of the narrative and that it was actually an appendix/glossary. It details some of the characters' closures, but nothing unpredictable or that you couldn't have gleaned from the earlier chapters.

In all a 2.5, rounded down because the more I think about the book, the more disappointed I feel.