The nonsensical woo woo is strong with this one. ( )

Meh.. ( )

A very disjointed experience. It's hard to say how I feel about this book because there are aspects of it that really worked for me, but they are hidden amidst a lot of passages that don't. It reads very much like a diary (which makes sense in the context of the story), but because of that I never quite knew what was happening within the plot. There is a certain subplot for example that is left unexplained, and while it should feel eerie and discomforting, I was mostly left confused and discombobulated.

Maybe that was the author's intent, and if so she did her job because that's absolutely how I felt. ( )

I like the books I read to make some kind of sense, and this one definitely did not do that. The supernatural aspects of the story were incomprehensible, which is a shame, because the basic concept of the plot line was interesting. I finished it, but I would not recommend it to anyone else. ( )

I had some issues with this book. I did enjoy it enough to stick with it until the end. Of course, this book got weirder as I went along so by the time I was ready to be done with it, I was so close to finishing that I just stuck with it. I feel that many readers will enjoy this one more than I did, but by the time I finished, I was bored, confused, and wondered if I was smart enough for this book.

This book tells Anna’s story. She starts hearing voices after the birth of her daughter, Lena, and those voices disappear once Lena starts talking. Her husband, Ned, is disinterested and Anna eventually leaves him with Lena. Anna and Lena end up in a hotel in Maine with an assortment of people who share a link and do their best to support each other. When Ned decides he wants to run for office, he needs his wife and daughter back. Anna is willing to do whatever Ned wants to keep her daughter safe and there seems to be no limit as to what he can control.

There were times that I felt like this book moved very slowly and there just wasn’t enough happening. Things do pick up in the second half of the book but that is where things got really weird. Anna seemed paranoid at times and I never connected with her or any of the characters. There was a whole theme surrounding language and religion that just didn’t do a lot for me. Obviously, this was not the right book for me.

I decided to listen to the audiobook which was narrated by the author and I am not sure that she was the best choice to read this story. I thought that her narration was rather flat and lacked the emotion that I hope to encounter when picking up an audiobook. I did notice that there are some audible sounds, such as pages turning, at several points in the audiobook which I found distracting. Unfortunately, this is a book that I will not be recommending.

I received a digital review copy of this book from W. W. Norton and Company via NetGalley and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library. ( )