Unfortunately I do judge books by their cover, and I thought for sure this book was going to be boring when instead it violently surpassed my expectations. I think I cried a couple times while reading it. The characters were so human and so readable.

Sometimes within a novel of short stories there are one or two that shine and the others fade into the background. I thought each story in this novel was powerful in its own way, and while there were (of course) some I connected with more than others, this book as a whole really shines as a sum of its parts.