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3.7 AVERAGE

dark emotional medium-paced
challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark medium-paced
dark sad medium-paced

This was the first of many books that I read to the song Infinite Love by Emile Mosseri. Perfect song for this book, filled with beautiful emotional wails that - along with the inner thoughts of the main character - seem to scream desperation and longing. Unreliable narrator, the main character clearly unwell and unable to face the reality of what she's done. Confusing ownership for love, desperate for love and acceptance wherever she can get it. The Asian-American experience is beautifully interwoven within this narrative, and you can see clearly how this affects her thought processes and actions. One of my favorites (though, from what I remember, the ending was a tad underwhelming). 
dark emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging emotional sad tense
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Absolutely haunting and gut-wrenching. The beginning is somewhat destabilizing because I expected to immediately sympathize with Frida but of course I did not. She left her 18 month old home alone for over 2 hours. This isn't ok - this isn't normal. I remember worrying about leaving to check the mail across the street. But Jessamine Chan did this purposefully, I am sure of it, to make the next steps more convincing, and the descent believable and profoundly frightening. Perhaps the Handmaid's Tale for mothers.