I wish I'd been able to connect with the characters in this book, but I always felt like they were completely distant. The central relationship is between two sisters, but I not only never felt anything about them, but didn't really feel their relationship. This is a problem since they're both at this writer's retreat that's very obviously on the edge of Faerie and just as obviously those artists are there to be tithes. It's no surprise when Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin echoes show up.

But back to these sisters. They spent years not speaking thanks to their abusive mother who caused a misunderstanding between them--a misunderstanding that the girls really should have seen through, actually. The mother looms over the lives of these young women but she seems almost less real than a fairy tale stepmother. It's like she just lives to torment the girls for no reason I can see. Not that I doubt that cruel people like this exist, but in this case she just doesn't feel real, nor does the pain the girls feel because of it.

A lot of the book deals with everyone at this artist's retreat trying to become great artists but that, too, is hard to put on the page. Especially the main character, who's a writer, and whose writing almost can't help but not live up to how good it's supposed to be.