I found several of the characters to be incredibly unlikeable,

and Florence in particular, but just as in the Lager Queen book, the worst-behaved characters are just forgiven without ever making amends or taking responsibility for what they’ve done.  Florence never really takes responsibility for outing Floyd and Archie (she presents herself as the victim throughout her adulthood and never explains why Floyd doesn’t like her), she never owns up to throwing away Mariel’s college applications to force her to stay close to home, she never admits how her attention-seeking behavior led to the deaths of her grandson (though she wasn’t the only adult at fault in that situation), and she never apologizes for making a scene at the church and allowing the narrative to spread that Mariel is heartless (in that she never reveals to her admirers that she demanded a ride through a proxy after 10 years of silence rather than reaching out personally, and that her daughter has good reason to not come for her). And we’re supposed to believe that she’s redeemed because she sees one photo with Floyd and Archie together later in life and has happy tears over it? She kept them apart for the majority of their adulthood and endangered their lives in the process. I sympathized with Florence for the first few chapters, but she got worse and worse as time went on. Her mother Betty was also terrible.

The unlikeable characters were a good foil to the ones I did like:

Floyd, Mariel, the majority of the staff at the Lakeside. They definitely made me root for Mariel, which made her death much more sad—just as she got everything she wanted, she just died.

I loved this book up until the last part that focused on Julia. Because she was introduced as a character so late, she didn’t bring the same emotional resonance. It felt like a too-long, weak epilogue rather than a conclusion to the book. I think she either should have been introduced earlier (without too much detail that would spoil the arc), or given much less space in the end of the book, or been blended more with the other characters.