I have such complicated feelings about this book I’m not sure where to begin.
My 4 star rating is closer to a guess than an accurate reflection of my feelings because there were a number of things that manipulated my thoughts throughout reading that I'm not sure where I stand, despite this being a relatively slow-paced book.
The characters (with a couple of exceptions) were pretty insufferable most of the time - but in an endearing and intricate way. Making them feel very real, and although I was not really personally rooting for them, I really did find myself wanting to know how their stories ended and never thought there was a slow section that I wasn’t interested in. I thought the characters were an exceptionally strong part of this story - the voice in which the two POVs were written (and the voices of the secondary characters, too) were so distinctly different (both from each other and from anything I’ve read before) and so rich, I really loved that aspect of this novel and the stories would not be half as good had the voices not been as compelling.
The imagery of the gorgeous settings in this novel is another of its strong suits, which was very important given the nature of the story, and something I really appreciated throughout.
A couple of times while reading I did get the unignorable feeling that this is certainly a woman being written by a man which definitely did pull me out of the story and is not something I enjoy or overlook and it did temporarily dampen my experience.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. I really did enjoy reading it and it was so unique, nasty and raw. I am unlikely to reread this book in the near future only because I like the way the emotions and feelings sat with me as a first-time readthrough.