So, how can Millie ever be happy after THAT? That was the lingering question from my review of the previous installment in this series. And yes, how? When everything becomes even more complicated with the knowledge that the dark secret can not be just suppressed and left being forgotten?

This is very human book, written beautifully and with the full understanding for the hard, hurtful questions and wrestlings of the human heart. No sugarcoating here - and while I would like to save Millie from her hard life, I also applaud to the authoress for being so brave to go full way down there to the broken places. The process of Millie's decision about Isabel and all the following transformation - this is one fine, quality writing - ands one fine, sensitive heart behind all of it. While being painfully honest and understanding.

I also like that she tries not to see the world through the black and white lens - this shows best at the one of the side characters, Diana. Diana itself is not bad, but she lives in the house of smoke and mirrors, so to say - and she wants these mirrors to show her just the pretty, safe picture. This blindness makes her petty and even cruel. Yet - she is not without heart, and while she is not a positive figure, she is also not a negative one. I wish her only better life after the harsh awakening of her glass house being fully broken.

This is also novels about secrets and dealing with them. While I totally understand Millie's silence (I might do just the same, being her - or maybe being me, too), this novel shows that the darkness can not be destroyed by silence. That the secrets might poison even the beautiful things. May we all learn again and again to live authentically, to try our best at forgiveness - and may God send us people who will serve as His right hands in helping us to deal with our secrets here on Earth - friends, listeners, healers, protectors, supporters and truth tellers.

As for the cons - while I love Oka, Millie's wise and sweet grandmother, I find the final scene of ritual "purging" being a bit too much. While Oka is Choctaw, she is Christian, too. There are traditions like that in the folklore of my country, too, and while I value the cultural heritage, I do not take these traditions too seriously in the sense of giving them some power (this is a superstition).

Found it really hard to get into and had to abandon. very very sorry.