This is another book that I really wanted to love but ended up thinking was just okay. It's a little too 'slice of life' for my tastes. It's well written and all of the characters are well-drawn, and many of the situations that are set up are compelling and I'd love to know how they're resolved. Unfortunately we never get a satisfying conclusion to any of them.

The final chapter serves as a little bit of a time skip, showing the fallout from all of the little dramas we've been watching, but it's all related to a new character with no investment in the situations as things that have already happened. I found it quite frustrating. The book almost seems to acknowledge this rug pull, too:

The stories we were hearing about perfect strangers were interesting and we wanted to hear them, and it's annoying that they were cut off before they ended. Maybe this is the point, and we're being asked to reflect on why we're so invested in the petty squabbles and dramas of other people? Maybe the book is telling us to mind our own business. But if that's the case it doesn't land, and I almost feel like I would have preferred everything to simply end unresolved rather than attempting to wrap things up with this loose, half-formed, unsatisfying denouement.



That said, I still enjoyed reading this, I just wish there had been a little more to it.