I was going to give this book 3 stars until I came to the ending, which I found I liked so much that it merited an extra half-star or star. Since half-stars aren't a thing on goodreads, I thought I'd be generous and just bump it up to 4 stars.

The main issue I had with this book is that I felt like about 75 pages of it could have been cut or trimmed down, because NOTHING happened in the. That really killed the overall momentum of the book for me, and made it a lot harder for me to want to finish this. Not that 300 pages is a long read, but this really feels like it could have been a good deal shorter and still kept the best bits.

I found myself feeling really sympathetic to Joseph after a while, which caught me by surprise. His loyalty to the Toblers is misguided, in my opinion, but genuine and understandable. He thinks himself a proper adult, but it's very clear from his occasional fits of irritability and his slavish loyalty to Herr Tobler that he's still got some growing up to do. I was in a similar point in my life a few years ago, at the same age as Joseph is in the novel, 24, and I also threw my devotion into a job that didn't merit it.

Another positive aspect of this book is that I feel like Joseph is a real flesh-and-blood character because he's got a very realistic balance of strengths and weaknesses. He's loyal, but stubbornly so. He's smart enough, but prone to somewhat cringe-inducing monologues about things he doesn't actually know that much about. He feels not only like someone I've gotten to know, but someone who actually exists in the real world.

I'm happy to have toughed out the slower bits, and I can honestly recommend this book. I'm happier having read it.