This book has an interesting premise. The story starts as one of rape-murder, and continues to talk of the fallout of the murder. The unusual style utilised puts the murdered girl front and center… as the narrator describing events from her “personal heaven”. And given that she is in heaven, she can follow the lives of her family, her friends and her murderer, who is never caught.
The interesting premise is all that the book really has going for it, though. It’s slow, boring and there is no real connection with any of the characters.
The mother had set aside her dreams and aspirations to be full-time mom, and the murder is the catalyst which then causes her to first cheat on her husband, and then abandon her family to do what can best be described as menial jobs on the other side of the country. The father ends up suspecting the actual culprit, but a series of misunderstandings left him broken, both physically and spiritually. The sister has to deal with her identity now reduced to “dead-girl’s sister”, while brother has to now grow up in a world without mother, ill father and dead sister.
There are more characters, none of whom are worth mentioning; the entire ensemble weren’t interesting enough to hold up the rest of the story, I was just relieved when I finally got to the end.
This is a painfully boring book, and I am at a loss to understand it’s popularity.