Jessica (HDB)

I'm honestly kind of of disappointed in this book. I'd heard so many rave reviews from friends who read, and loved it. Perhaps I set my expectations slightly too high because of that, but this just didn't live up to what I was hoping for. I understood what Ng was going for. I saw the picture that she was trying to paint with total clarity. This story just never hit the point where I felt fully invested in it, and that was a shame.

This book was written beautifully. It was lyrical, and flowed perfectly. It was the characters that never let me into their lives. Even Lydia, our poor deceased main character, felt like a flat piece of cardboard rather than a real girl. I hated her mother. I hated her brother. I somewhat liked her father and her sister, but really only because they were the two characters who had some kind of depth to them. They were flawed, and they let me see their true selves. Lydia was a cutout. A cutout of a girl who is floundering in a life that she didn't build for herself. I'm not going to lie, I kind of hated her too.

I know there will be people who love this story. I, alas, am simply not one of them.