The writing is quite good, but my goodness are the characters unlikable. The only one I admired was Annabella. The relationships between the four main characters (mother, dad, son, and son's self-defense teacher who becomes a family friend) were depressingly unhealthy and stifled. The narrator doesn't trust her husband, can't talk to her son, and

starts off disliking the self-defense teacher but then does a sudden, inexplicable 180 and spontaneously cheats on her husband with him (with almost no build-up to this at all)

. I got so infuriated by the narrator's inability to relate to anyone in her life in a positive or healthy way that, by the end of the book, I had given up my attempts at emotional investment and just didn't care what became of anyone anymore.