I gave this a four right when I finished reading it (the rating screen pops up on my kindle), but a day later, I’m changing it to a three. I just don’t know what the author was really trying to do, and I’m not sure if the big twist was supposed to be a big twist. It was clear about 200 pages before it was actually written out, and if it was NOT supposed to be obvious, then it would be manipulative instead.

Nominally, this is a story about two mothers who want more for their children than they had themselves, but go about it in horrible ways (one racist, the other cruel), and we see them and their children in different parts of their lives spanning a total of about 30 years. Unfortunately, the cause-and-effect relationship among the different periods doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, so we end up with characters defined entirely by a single moment in their lives. It’s not clear whether the author is trying to caricature some of the worst ones, or build empathy, and the happy endings for everyone feel unearned.