2.5 Well this is a book filled with tragedy. There were parts of the story that I really enjoyed, but overall, I just wasn't very engaged with it. The writing is simplistic, and while this would perfectly suit this kind of story in a short story to small novella format, I think a 300+ page novel might have been too much. Many of the characters' plights felt very similar to me. The themes of rape and teenage sexuality were explored in some interesting (but repetitive) ways, and those were the parts I found more interesting, but in other parts the story fell a little flat.

I think if the writing was more poetic, or the story was 100 pages shorter, I probably would have rated it higher.