Kristopher Schramm

This book is a real mess. It was somehow even worse than Salvage the Bones - which was terrible. Ward unsuccessfully tries to cram together way too many elements, including racism, incarceration, the history of violence against black people, drug abuse, ghosts, native american spirit animals, FOUR different first person narrators, magical abilities, the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, and more. All the characters except Jojo are too one dimensional to be believable. The endings for main characters Leoni and Richie don’t make any sense at all. The character of Stagg is abandoned altogether. The story of Richie‘s death doesn’t make any sense. The road-trip pitstop at the math lab doesn’t fit into the story in anyway. Ward seemingly attempts to make a statement about white privilege by pointing to the character of Misty, who is a meth addict and part-time waitress, from the same poor, rural, backwoods hellhole as all the other characters. Ward fails to land any of the points she is trying to make because the narrative is so muddied it is annoying to read. Skip this turd, and instead, read The Nickle Boys, by Colson Whitehead, and Genesis Begins Again, by Alicia D Williams.