The prose here is so easy to read that I felt as if it were a shorter book than it was - I ended up reading it in a single day. It's also constructed very well, as three families that are falling apart, for very different reasons, find themselves connected together as secrets come to light... but I also feel that it's connected too well, if you get my drift. Everything is so neatly balanced that, as affecting as a lot of what happens is, it also strikes me as rather artificial in places. That's an impression that's reinforced, I think, by a number of really melodramatic twists. I don't want to say that it's not effective, because it is, and the emotional impact is rock solid. It's a very likeable book, with a determined, muted hopefulness, but the mechanism of all that heart-tugging is on clear display.