I read this as part of my project to read all of the books nominated for a 2023 Goodreads Choice Award in the debut category.

Any time you have a story flashing back and forth between timelines, you risk choking the momentum of the story. Unfortunately, I felt that was the case here. There were a lot of portions of this that had me invested and that I thought were gripping and thoughtful, but the present timeline in the story felt really flat compared to the rest. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly to me why those present pieces were included, and so then I just kept asking myself why we needed them in the way they were used. It felt like framing for the sake of it and brought down my experience with the book overall.

That said, I feel like there is still plenty of merit here, and I would read from this author again.