Liz says,"I don't know if I have the words to adequately describe my feelings about this book, except it was the exact right book at the exact right time. It is the ultimate coming-of-age-novel when the illusions and heroes of childhood are smashed. When the black-and-white vision of childhood, believing everything your elders say, to the white-and-black reversal of first freedom away from those elders come crashing together into the gray shades of reality; that is this book in a nutshell. 'It's bearable, Jean Louise, because you are your own person now.'

"I don't know if this book and its ideas could have withstood being published when it was written, but I think we're ready for it now. Also the length of time the world has thought Atticus is the greatest man in all of fiction, was the perfect setup for the gut-wrenching betrayal that is brutal even if you already have an inkling about what happens.

On the less emotional side, the style is wonderful (if a bit preachy at parts) with glimpses into the extended Finch family and a few flashbacks on Scout/Jean Louise in her awkward years and the scraps she gets into that are so prevalent in the first novel."