Choices. Choices we make. Choices we don’t. Choices that are made “for our own good” - before we even know what the word means. 

Free will. We are taught everyone has it and as such is responsible for their own responses, yet how much of our free will hinges on the actions of others, on the choices other people make. How much of our free will is merely a reactionary response to what has happened  in someone else’s life bleeding into our own, affecting our own? 

Is this just a case of the snake eating its own tail? Furthermore, can this just be a giant metaphor for our many systems of oppression that we are currently faced with?

“Now, Angela,” you may be thinking, “all you’re doing is leaving us with a bunch of theoretical questions.” That is the beauty of this book; it forces you to question. Just when you think you know the motivation for a character, another POV enters and upturns it on its head. We are all multi-faceted people moving through systems that are not set up for our benefit. Ever. That is the underlying theme. One feeds into another so if you avoid one, there is a high chance you will be shuffled into another. 

Remember the game Chutes and Ladders? All that separated a fall from an ascent was a roll of the dice. 

Yet here is another piece of life’s puzzle - good and evil. No one is wholly good, no one is wholly evil. How do you determine the “optimal balance” - when is a human considered disposable? Do they ever reach a point where they are past help? Do we even have the tools in place to help rehabilitate people who have been deemed “irredeemable” in order to answer that question?

This book expertly weaves so many interconnecting POVs, nature vs. nurture, family dynamics, the ethicality of the death penalty as well as what justice truly looks like. My book is filled with notes and pencil marks. I can’t recommend this highly enough.