Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This review is based on my experience of reading the ENTIRE kindle version of this novel. NO SPOILERS revealed here.... just honest opinion. MODERATELY INTERESTING: The use of dual timelines and stories was easily understandable and the connections between the two were compatible and intriguing. About 75% of the story is invested in the Marian Graves timeline and although I preferred this to the Hadley timeline, there is an INCREDIBLE AMOUNT of "life" that is revealed. At first the DETAIL and INVESTIGATION of EVERY MONTH of Marian's life starts out as interesting but as you continue with the story you realize that MOST of the information is extraneous to the story. After I finished the book I kept thinking to myself "Why did I need to know ALL of that?" **BUT what is even MORE PERPLEXING is that this same investigation is used for several supporting characters as well. EXAMPLE: At about 40% the Hadley character and friend take some shrooms and get high. There are 4 PAGES of discussion about what being high feels like.......It was like this...... it's like that..... IT WAS NEVER ENDING...... The superfluous information throughout this novel did NOT impart a deeper connection or empathy with the characters. In fact I would estimate that my feelings about the characters are very apathetic (personally that is NOT a sign of great reading experience and especially NOT a memorable novel). EXTREMELY BORING: There are MANY instances where the author does the complete opposite and SUMMARIZES the timeline so instead of reading first-hand about what the characters say and do you are given a glossed-over idea of what occurred during a certain period of time. I felt DISCONNECTED with the story and I became UNINTERESTED and UNMOTIVATED to continue. I would actually count the pages to determine how much further I needed to suffer in the summary before the story switched to a present-tense setting (even though I was frustrated with all the useless minutia). FINAL THOUGHTS: I would NOT recommend this novel as it currently reads. I think the novel could easily be edited and slimmed to 400 or less pages without sacrificing the momentum of the story. Frankly, the truncation of the story to its integral parts may strip away the extraneous information to allow the reader a more direct experience of the inner turmoil and conflict of the characters and ultimately the book may perform better with reviewers.