Reconciling with trauma, the past and forgiving oneself it’s a difficult thing for anyone to do. In this novel, we follow three different perspectives Nell, Dolores (Nell’s mother) and Martina throughout the years 1982-2018 in a non-linear timeline. Three different women and three different generations in Ireland following them navigate the women’s rights movement of that time.

First and foremost I should get this out of the way, I didn’t know anything about this book before reading it -other than it being Irish fiction and gay- and I really should’ve looked more into it because it has a lot of topics I’m not interested in reading which is 100% my bad and not any fault of the book.

This book is heavily religious and mostly about religious guilt/trauma -like that is the main theme in this novel same with Irish abortion rights, two things that aren’t really my jam -don’t get me wrong- I’m pro-choice and learning about Ireland is somewhat interesting but when picking up a novel that follows a lesbian character I just had different expectations.

About 40% of the novel follows Dolores‘s perspective/Martina’s perspective and I was BORED. Reading Martina’s chapters were a CHORE! Most of this book was exhausting to read. I aged like 20 years no joke.

*trigger warning discussing sa* Nell's chapters were the more entertaining parts of the book until reading about her -a lesbian forcing herself to have sex with a man and Martina’s sexual assault (on page mind you.) being right after.. was just too much sexual violence for the reader to endure. I was so uncomfortable I probably should’ve dnf’d. But I was still curious about Nell’s story so I pushed through till the end.

Maybe certain people will like this story and benefit from it but I don’t know if I did.

One of the positives for me was the writing -it was very eloquent and refreshing so I might attempt to read the author’s next work.

Thanks to publishers and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.