This book was like getting into a conversation with someone where it should take 5 minutes, but ends up being 45 because of all the rabbit trails and side anecdotes that really didn’t matter but were thrown in anyways. And then you realize-mid monologue that you have no idea what you all started talking about in the first place. There were so many things going on and nothing going on all at the same time. Also so many characters it felt impossible to keep track of or remember who was who, and how they were related.

Outside of the last 15% of it that got interesting, I got so bored that I had to take a break and read another book every few chapters. And ironically each time I went back to this one because of all the rabbit-trailing I didn’t even need to try to refresh where I left off because I’d be in a different rabbit trail on this new chapter. 

When it all boils down to it, the story really was very little about the “lost boy” - it was about Franca trying to constantly be savior and navigating a little town in Italy that was very poor, backwards and corrupt, its intersecting and overlapping relationships, and deception. Yeah there was some mystery as she played Nancy Drew at a couple of the townspeople’s request (which was also weird why she took this upon herself honestly) and tried to unravel everyone’s secrets, but again, it was so slow, repetitive and interspersed I never got invested until the very end and then it ended up the way I had figured. It just felt like it went around and around the same details and hurdles time and again without much progress and I lost the plot. 

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are mine.