I liked the passages in which Sonny takes stock of what little life amounts to for most of the small-town West Texans around him (no one in this book is happy, and only a few have some hope that will change), but much of the rest was off-putting in a way that didn’t seem intentional. For instance, every woman is introduced either as fat or “too skinny,” and although it felt like the author was occasionally critical of *some* characters’ brands of misogyny (I’m looking at you, coach), he was perfectly comfortable with the prejudices/abuses of others, and seemed to want us to like those characters because we identified with it/them. (For the record, I did *not* identify. This felt like a Man’s Book for Men of a Certain Era.) Overall, I appreciated the story but I guess I wish it had been told in a different way? This is probably the horniest book I’ve ever read and I wanted to dump a bucket of ice water on pretty much every character.