Five Little Indians

3.5 stars. The story and characters are very powerful, and this topic is obviously so important. This book does a really good and nuanced job of showing multiple peoples' experiences in the aftermath of residential school. The variety of paths they take, while sometimes following similar patterns, is interesting. The way their traumas carry through in different ways is painful and compelling. I would definitely recommend this book for the educational aspect of it. I found it educational and interesting and I felt deeply for the characters.

The 3.5 star rating is largely because I personally did not love the structure or the writing style. I found the structure of moving from character to character to be a little bit confusing in the way it was done. At times it took me out of the story. The writing style in general just did not work for me at times. It may work for others: I've seen other reviews criticizing the dialogue, but I had no problem with the dialogue. For me it was something about the flatness of the writing, and the fact that sometimes we got these deep and intense inner thoughts and then other times the writing was very matter of fact and objective, and the transitions between those two ways of writing didn't feel smooth to me. The point of view is third person limited with occasional first person (used selectively, in specific parts of the book, but still felt awkward to me), but the frequent switching between different characters and following each one in third person felt awkward...especially because there was very little shift in tone between the different characters' sections, despite their differences in personalities.