I’m struggling with how to even start this review. It will be heavy, and more than slightly uncomfortable. Honestly, I’m kind of wishing I never lifted this book off the shelf. Maybe that’s why I haven’t posted a review SINCE MAY!!! Good God, what’s wrong with me?

In lieu of giving a formal synopsis, I’m just going to jump in. Our main character is Wavy, a waifish child of an abusive meth-dealing father who mostly ignores her existence, and a chronically depressed mother who spends all her days in a drug-fueled semi-conscious purgatory. Wavy spends her nights memorizing constellations and sneaking food, and she spends her days keeping her little brother alive since no one else seems up to the job. Essentially, this girl never got the chance to be a child. There are mental and emotional things going on here that would require professional help. What she gets instead, however, is a similarly-troubled young man named Kellen. She witnesses him wreck his motorcycle and comes to his aid at the age of 8, and the two develop a friendship. Over the course of the novel, however, their friendship develops into something more.

Ok, first of all, I will not be talking about how romantic this book is. You can not have a romance between a man and a child. What I did see, and it was done really well, are two people who actually take the time to see each other when no one else will. I can see how a bond would form between those two people. However, Kellen met Wavy when she was 8 years old. By the time she is 13, their relationship has become, if not overtly sexual, sexually charged. At this point, Kellen is 25. This is where I can’t be on board. It’s not as if his attraction to her grew over time. It grew in intensity, but he admits to wrecking his motorcycle because the sight of her standing there blinded him and he thought she was an angel. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. SHE IS AN EIGHT YEAR OLD WHO IS DESCRIBED AS LOOKING EXTREMELY YOUNG FOR HER AGE!

All that being said, Greenwood is a fabulous writer. Her characters are raw, realistic, and intensely complicated to the point of being utterly problematic. I did not dislike this book, but it left me feeling so conflicted I was a bit queasy. Frankly, I don’t dislike Kellen. I probably should feel like he groomed Wavy, but I don’t think that at all. Not intentionally, anyway. I believe he was very conflicted about his feelings for her, and Wavy honestly seemed to be the more aggressive one in this relationship. However, Wavy had grown up seeing women as commodity. They were there as something to be used by men. Considering this, she does not have a healthy view of love or relationships. She would feel she owes him something in return for his kindness. We are talking about a little girl who’s witnessed her own father receiving blow jobs from the various women he keeps around for his amusement right under the nose of his half-comatose wife. While Kellen does his best not to take advantage of Wavy, he still plays with fire way too much. If you know you should not be having inappropriate relations with a little girl, you shouldn’t sneak up to her bedroom at night and sleep in her bed. Frankly, both of these individuals need some serious mental health help before they can pursue any kind of fulfilling relationship.

See? There’s a consensus.

I’m not going to go into the ending, but let’s just say it does nothing to assuage these problematic feelings. I will give Greenwood credit for coming up with something moving, original, and intensely thought provoking, but I’m going to close this chapter of my reading life with giving this one 3 stars. And then I’m going to try to forget about the icky feelings this one inspires.

Published August 9, 2016 by Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 9781250153968. 432 pages. Hardcover.