I loved this book. It had the perfect beats of emotion for me. The complicated characters and family were fun, and frustrating, and felt very real. The characters were so rich! Joy, the counselor with poor boundaries felt like a lot of people I know. She could have been too much, to rigid, to controlling, but the author gives us what we need to empathize with her and see her story for what it was. Aunty Nancy started for me as an intolerable religious zealot, but by the end I just felt sympathy for her loss, and the wild way grief manifested for her. Many other characters had similar complexities and I loved every minute of the mad weekend they all spent together. The author knows how to illicit true feelings of grief and sorrow, while balancing it with absurd humour of death and families. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes books about families and how imperfect we all are.

This was an ok read for me. Some sections held my attention, others I skimmed through. I liked the characters & the story idea, but found some of the dialogue a little forced. I think this would have made a wonderful short story, was a bit long for a novel.