Okay so I did finish and my review below still stands. The story has potential, I found Noah’s journey to be the most immersive and powerful. I was truly invested in knowing what had happened and what would happen.

The main set up for Nell and Noah meeting was very random, and while I can’t speak from experience it did feel like the social worker went a bit too far in his questioning of Nell to begin with. Though I don’t doubt at all they’d WANT to know who Violets father is since she was requesting food stamps, his level of questioning and presumptuous questioning seemed a bit... odd. Like to ask who the dad is, fine. To say it’s weird she got pregnant from a one night because she seems smarter than that... seems unprofessional and it didn’t serve any real purpose.

But I’m glad I finished it, I really enjoyed Noah’s story and truly think the novel could have bee JUST his story without losing too much. Unfortunately the amount of grammatical errors and the like were too frequent to ignore, and did take me out of the story when they happened. That being said, I would read from this author again, in hopes that with time and an editor, her skill will only improve.
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Original review:
The story itself is interesting, a single mom makes up a man as her daughters father and through sheer luck this imaginary man exists and and chaos ensues.

However I don't think this book has ever seen an editor and it's distracting. There are many lines I have to reread and struggle to figure out who was talking, there's weird grammar mistakes, a few missing words. Sometimes I couldn't tell if the 'spoken sign language' was meant to be Broken English because ASL doesn't literally sign every word so she was going for a more 'literal' sign translation or if words were just missing because it wasn't properly proofread.

There's also a gay man who dies from AIDS related complications so not only does it follow 'bury your gays' trope, but also AIDS related death are not that common in America in this day and age, which i suspect this story is modern day.

Also, on a more personal critique, the lack of chapters makes the book just feel really long because there's rarely a clear 'stopping point'. However these are personal issues that don't really bother me too much.

The story has promise, and there are genuinely good elements. I love that she is a sign language interpreter, and I think there was a really good argument when

Spoiler

Nell gets suspended for interjecting her opinion into her translating because she felt like the person was being unfairly treated. It's something where if you and your spouse went into that situation together, or you went with a friend for moral support you might expect someone to do but

her job is to be a literal translator and she is supposed to allow for unbiased translation, but how can you do that when you KNOW the person is being treated unfairly?

While it's clear this is an early novel from Williams I can see promise in the storytelling, she just really needs an editor.