Prose was incredibly stilted at times. I typically don’t enjoy novels written from a child’s perspective and this was no different. Reminded me a lot of “The First Day of Spring” which I also disliked. 

The switch between third and first person narration was jarring and awkward, and I still don’t understand why the whole thing was told as a story-within-a-story, with some stories not even actually happening. I feel like it would’ve been better if the accident with Agnes was obscured instead of plainly describe in the first few pages - there was no mystery to the rest of the book.