I'm a little slow, I guess, but I finally just read this. Yeah, definitely not a book that you just love or not--it's one that you (or at least I) think about and take apart. The biggest thought in my mind when I was reading it was that it felt like one of those Orton effect photos (do a google image search to see what I mean--like seeing through multiple layers, some of which are out of focus. Sometimes the mood is glowing and lush, and sometimes ghostly and eerie.) What I really liked: Eldric--he was great "glue" to the whole town, and despite his bad boy claims, he very much wasn't. The way the reader's perception changes on certain characters 180 degrees over the story (a bit like Heather Dixon's ENTWINED that way, only with a whole different mood). The very, very end--even though there were times that I felt rather distant from Briony, the MC, I found myself tearing up on those last couple of pages. That said, I did have a hard time connecting with Briony early in the story, and I also guessed some of the big reveals early on, too. But I was also engaged in the disentangling of various abusive relationships, so I wasn't too disturbed to have guessed. Overall, some things touched me but I think other parts missed me somehow. An interesting book to talk about because of that, though!