The moments and episodes and stories of the kids' lives are of a sweetness hard to describe. They bring back fond memories, and they touch you profoundly.
But the horror story in the middle, which in reality is the longest (too long!) part of the book is stale and boring. There are so many things you can at least guess in advance that in the end it results in an incredibly long (did I mention it's long?) anticlimax. It's all clear-cut, black and white, good and bad: everything is clearly defined, and the problem is that you get it immediately. And that wasn't intended as a compliment at all.

And by the way, this particular Thomas Dunne Books edition is printed too small: your eyes get tired after just a few pages, and that's why it took me a month to read 500 pages. I'll stick to Kindle books for a while, with their big bad black text!