I really tried with this book but I think that it’s just not the story for me. I stopped around 50% completed.

I have a really hard time with the first part of the book with the type of trauma that’s shown. I wish that the book came with trigger and content warnings as the events that happened are triggering. What truly made me stop was that I just didn’t care about the characters. The different timelines and stories made it really confusing to find out who the main protagonist was. Was it Eleanor? Was it Agnes? Was it Esmeralda? Was it Eleanor? Then once it got into the story of the main protagonist, I just didn’t care at all by that point. I had lost interest.

Maybe I’ll try again in the future, but I’m not too sure.

I thought that this book was really well done. It was an emotional read that broke my heart more than once. I felt so much for Eleanor and her family and believe that nobody should have to go through the things that they do in this story. I really liked the way that this book dealt with pain, grief, depression and didn’t shy away from showing the ugly side of these emotions. I found this to be a very touching story.

The book opens with Eleanor. Eleanor is married to a man that she loves and has a little girl. She doesn’t seem completely happy though but she finds that it helps to swim so she takes to the ocean on a daily basis. Eleanor’s little girl, Agnes, grows up to be the mother of twin girls named Eleanor and Esmerelda. On the way to pick up the girls’ father, the family gets into a terrible wreck and Esmerelda doesn’t survive. Eleanor’s mother deals with the loss with a bottle and essentially stops mothering her remaining child. Her father ends up leaving when the marriage falls apart but remains an active part of Eleanor’s life.

I liked the way that magical realism is worked into the story. Eleanor is thrust into these alternate and sometimes dream worlds where time moves very differently. She had no control of where or went she is pulled into these alternate dimensions and she struggles with how to explain everything to those in her life. The characters we meet in the alternate dimension do play an important role and I liked how everything came together in the end.

Cassandra Campbell does a wonderful job with the narration of this novel. I liked all of the different voices that she used for the characters in this story. I thought that she added a lot of emotion into her reading and was able to take this book to the next level. I believe that her narration added to my overall enjoyment of the book.

I would recommend this book to others. I found this to be a very well-written novel that deals with some horrible situations. I wouldn’t hesitate to read more of this author’s work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Crown Publishing via NetGalley and purchased a copy of the audiobook.

It felt like this book was trying a bit too hard. The prose was so flowy that the plot was completely lost. I've tried to pick it up several times over the years and never truly got into it.

Okay so I love wispy prose books like this, but this just didn't catch me. I get lost in this stuff typically but it all felt like it was trying so hard it lost the plot. It functions as if it wants to be stream of consciousness and prey upon the vulnerabilities and feelings but never sinks in it's teeth.

Still a beautiful read even if it left me a little wanting.

This book is very difficult to describe. It was fascinating, and very difficult to put down.

This is an excellent book about how one event can change everything. It took me a while because I kept hitting sad parts and I had to put it down. It is also fantasy and some of the settings are inside dreams. It's about how Agnes' mother disappeared when she was a small child and how everything spiraled out of control from that point forward. How do you help someone that has never been happy? Someone that has been sad since before you were ever born? I don't want to give anything away. You'll just have to read it and find out for yourself what a great and creative story this is.

I opened the book, read the first few pages, and it just didn't appeal to me anymore.

Yea, this flowery prose just wasn't for me. I forgot half the story in the descriptions. It was much too fantastical for me personally. It was really sloooow to start. I couldn't get over the hump tbh.

It starts off in this descriptive text and then just gets weird. I just can't force myself to read something that is obviously not in my taste. Too bad, really. The cover had me thinking it would be good. Oh well!

I did not post my review for this on my blog. I don't think I understood what the author was trying to do with this.

This book wasn't for me--fun premise, lovely writing, but didn't hold my interest!