At the start I thought this was going to be very religious, was convinced it wasn’t half way through, then realized at the end it’s just a basic Christian story of suffering, forgiveness, and redemption. The author used and abused a female character to drive the story arcs of 3 male characters, which is very disappointing from a female author. That’s pretty damning, but there are other major problems. Each character tells the story by talking to another character, so it's awkward. For instance, "You came to my house and we talked about..." Yeah, that person knows that! They were there! It's telling, not showing, and it reminds me of when I used to watch daytime soaps in college. If you missed a day, the characters would awkwardly tell other characters something they already knew to catch you, the TV viewer, up. Then there are the dogs’ stories. That really jumped the shark. This gets 2 stars instead of 1 because I was curious about the conclusion of the story, and there is some beautiful writing.