This was a perfectly good book, but it could have been better for me. I broke my no lit-fic rule and put this on my TBR even before the second IRL book club I’m in chose this for later this year. The combination of the book being set in the mystery-adjacent aftermath of a tragedy (a murder-suicide between two teenaged boys), a sixteen year old girl who shows up pregnant afterwards, and the two remaining parents of the dead boys being neighbors just sounded way too interesting for me to pass up.
Overall, I liked this book. I thought as a whole, it mostly succeeded in what it was trying to do, which was tell a story about grief and love, and building new family and new relationships in the aftermath of trauma that tore apart your old ones. The two main POV characters are Isaac (told in first person), the father of the murdered boy and a practicing Quaker, and Evangeline (third person), the pregnant girl who shows up afterwards and who knew both of the boys. There are also interludes of first person POV from Jonah, the boy who murdered Isaac’s son, reflecting on his life on the day of his death by suicide.
Isaac was an interesting character to follow, and although he was frustrating at times in the things he didn’t want to acknowledge, ultimately his grief and his arc as a character was satisfying. I also thought the book succeeds with Evangeline, who struggles to trust anyone because of her past but ultimately finds herself a new family. Where I think the book fails is in the portrayals of Jonah and the boy he killed, his supposed childhood best friend, Daniel. Daniel’s character is barely sketched in, and what is there is frankly unpleasant. He’s a bully, and we don’t get to see much nuance from him. Jonah’s POVs were interesting, but ultimately I felt nothing for him because the avenue the author chose to go with for his motivations felt so predictable and trite.
Not upset I read this, and I did like it, but not a favorite.
[3.5 stars]
