One year ago the Mendenhall family suffered a devastating car accident, which killed the teenage son, Austin, and left the mother, Lori, badly injured and dealing with the loss of the last nine years of her memories. Now as Lori returns home from her care facility, she finds her relationships with her husband, Michael, and daughter, Avery, strained both by grief and in ways she no longer has context for. She struggles to understand the woman she became in the missing nine years and to uncover the source of her family's dysfunction which both her slowly healing mind and her husband seem intent on keeping hidden. At the same time, Avery, Austin's twin, must begin to pull herself out of her self-imposed isolation and redefine herself without her twin and the friends who abandoned her during her grief.
Despite the compelling premise, this book was only a 2.5 read for me. I generally felt apathetic towards all the characters, which was unfortunate for such a character-focused story framed around heavy emotions -- grief, loss, and the way relationships can crumble or reform. The characters' actions and emotional ups and downs - even those of the point-of-view characters - felt arbitrary, more so the further the story went on. At times I was also surprised by how little weight Austin's death had in the story. Michael seemed to have no raw emotions about it at all, despite being the most directly responsible for Austin's death, and Lori came across the same way at times. I had to keep reminding myself, 'it's been a year, feelings dull,' but it still came off as odd given the framing of the story. I think it was a product of trying to do too much in not enough space. If this had just been Lori's story or just Avery's, there might have been more balance between their rebuilding of surviving relationships and exploring of grief as well as more chance to bring out their character.
Despite the compelling premise, this book was only a 2.5 read for me. I generally felt apathetic towards all the characters, which was unfortunate for such a character-focused story framed around heavy emotions -- grief, loss, and the way relationships can crumble or reform. The characters' actions and emotional ups and downs - even those of the point-of-view characters - felt arbitrary, more so the further the story went on. At times I was also surprised by how little weight Austin's death had in the story. Michael seemed to have no raw emotions about it at all, despite being the most directly responsible for Austin's death, and Lori came across the same way at times. I had to keep reminding myself, 'it's been a year, feelings dull,' but it still came off as odd given the framing of the story. I think it was a product of trying to do too much in not enough space. If this had just been Lori's story or just Avery's, there might have been more balance between their rebuilding of surviving relationships and exploring of grief as well as more chance to bring out their character.