Winter Garden

a shockingly good ending to wrap up a book that's taken me nearly a year to finish! I'm sorry, but the first section I got into had such a lack of interest for me that I immediately fell off putting the effort in and almost gave up. My mom reminded me I wanted to read it last month though, and I came back around. We were supposed to read it as a buddy-read in March. She finished it before April, and you see how my progress went.

Anyway! The book was a stellar ending that managed to make me overlook the beginning and middle bits I didn't jive with. I think it ultimately just could've been better throughout, but I can also see how someone would disagree with me. I loved the way Hannah led us through the story bit by bit so that we picked up on little things throughout, but never all at once. I never felt tempted to "guess ahead" either, because the story was always giving me something to think about, such that I wasn't trying to skip to the "big shock". Even at the very end, which I guess I would consider the "big shock" I still was happy at the pacing that the author chose.

I wrote in my book journal in response to the question: "Who would you recommend this book to? someone with mom trauma. but like... not too much