Book is still available to request as of the writing of this post.
We meet Effie, who is down on her life. She is exceedingly morose and has but one person she does not quarrel with regularly. This is the story of how she finds herself again.
Effie is living with her parents, has but one childhood friend who counts more as a frenemy and as someone who has had a partial experience of that kind of dynamics, understood her frustration. A noisy eater crosses her path, and from then on, she is forced to shake up her regular monotony. It has a very significant growth arc, leading to the point that the Matilda (Effie) who we end up with is a woman who likes the legs she stands on and we can cheer on any regular day. There was a lot of angst and soul searching, and at a point, I thought I had noticed too many ‘sneer’s and on checking found only five in the entire book so I was mistaken. It is a gruelling journey, and the author has not left any stones unturned in describing the depths of despair Matilda goes to. It just was mildly frustrating to be able to see what was wrong (as an outside observer) while the character continues to bemoan the situation without addressing the relevant possibilities.
It is a story of a couple and the journey they take towards common goals, and it was well written, and I would read other books by the author in the future!
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 