As always with Jodi Piccoult’s books, I had a hard time putting this book down. It is an engaging and insightful story that clearly depicts the confusion, denial, and relational enmeshment that allows abusive relationships to continue, even when the abusive pattern is obvious to everyone but the victim. As such, it is an excellent book for helping both victims of domestic violence and others understand the dynamics involved and begin to recognize patterns of kindness followed by beatings, followed by more kindness and so on for what they are– abuse.
I recommend this to anyone who wonders if they might be in an abusive relationship or to those who, like me, may have grown up in an abusive situation. Reading this helped me see some ways I have carried relational patterns from childhood into the present, so that now I can more effectively address those patterns and also try to bring truth into those relationships that, while no longer abusive in the same way now that I am not a child, still are not healthy.