I feel a bit bad, but I really didn’t like this book. I persevered with it to the end as I did want to discover what happened to the characters, but I had to push myself to keep going with it.

There were several things I didn’t like - mainly the scenes of Delia’s father in prison and the violence he suffered there. I found that too disturbing and unsettling - he was being punished enough having to be in prison and separated from his family and he felt guilt at what he had done - I don’t think it was necessary for the author to punish him more. Everytime it came to one of his chapters (each chapter told the story from a different character’s point of view) my heart sank a little.

My other difficulty was that I didn’t really feel involved with any of the characters - I don’t know that I can fully believe that best friends can be in love with the same girl and everything be fine and easygoing.

I also thought there seemed to be too many heavy duty storylines going on - Delia’s kidnapping was obviously the major one, but there was also her husband’s alcoholism and his memories of his mother’s alcoholism, Delia learning her own mother was an alcoholic, Ruthann’s alternative lifestyle and her problems, the competition felt between the best friends for Delia’s affections, and then right at the end the huge revelation of what had happened to Delia as a child. Phew, I found so many dramatic stories a bit too exhausting for one book.

Anyway, I see Jodi Picoult has written many books so I will try some others, but this one wasn’t as good as I’d expected.