The first two lines were great: "My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us."
In my mind I said "Oh, this sounds good. All those people were wrong, it's going to be a good book."
Um, nope. After the first couple of chapters the story gets a little odd and becomes mainly about the older sister's sexuality and her issues with other women. She is not a likeable character. In fact there are only a few characters I could stand. The writing style was very odd. There were many times I didn't know who was thinking or talking and would have to go back and reread. Quite a bit of the book is told through letters that only go one way.
Set mostly in the 1940's the characters have a string of bad luck brought on mostly by their own choices or the people they've let into their lives. Eva is abandoned by her mother without a goodbye or explanation and left to live with a father she doesn't know well and a sister she has never met. Their father is a mess: a liar, theif, con man and coward, just to name a few of his faults. Iris' actions are criminal and abusive. Eva seems to try to do her best to keep things going and pick up the mess everyone creates. I kept hoping things would turn around but it took until the end of the book for a glimmer of future hope. I also thought the end was abrupt and the final page I was just like "whaaaat?" That didn't really go with the entire book in my opinion, but ok. The whole book just felt like a train veering off the tracks and never righted itself.
To sum up: Nice cover art, great opening lines, crappy mixed up story written badly and ended abruptly. It could have been a much better story. Thankfully I saved my money and used the library.
2/5 Stars
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