The story is of Breeda who has spent the last few months caring for her dying mother and then grieving for the loss. She is adrift, and this is a sort of coming of age story for Breeda because she may finally be able to shake off the weight on her heart.
The setting is based in a close-knit community in Ireland. This means that both the good and the bad are common knowledge amongst the general public. The villain of the piece, for the most part, was Breeda’s aunt. She holds herself to the strictest of standards, making her a caricature of a righteous older woman. During many parts of the story, I felt like there was something off about the picturization and only at the end did I register that it was written by a man(I genuinely did not pay attention to that fact when picking it up). This fact made my discomfort, with some parts of the story, make sense. It did feel like someone outside of Breeda narrating it all, despite us having access to her thoughts.
I think the story has potential, and if the reader is not as finicky as me with regards to the turns stories take, they will be able to enjoy this more than I did. Until the halfway point, I still was involved and even liked the last chapter or so, but the big climactic scenes did not sit well with me. There are some interesting dynamic interactions that I think can be dissected by reading groups, but overall it was not a book for me.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 