Sometimes, you need to go a long way to get home.
Plot: Delilah Green finally escaped her reluctant step mother and sister and their absolutely stifling small town. Despite the small apartment and mostly casual connections she has made as a struggling artist in New York, she feels like she can properly breath for the first time. Her step family isn’t done with her though, and she is cajoled into coming home for her step-sister’s wedding – as the photographer. Hey, what’s a bit of family trauma for $15k? Plus, her first night back, one of her step-sister’s best friends hits on her. And she’s hot. So between that and trolling her stuck up step-sister, there’s enough to keep her amused. Probably. Shenanigans ensue.
I think we, as a reading community, so fully and wholly rejected Big Misunderstandings as a concept (and rightly so), but authors are now pushing back, trying to remind us that in fact, there are Big Misunderstandings that happen all the time, and that they can have enormous implications for people’s lives. It isn’t driven by plot or solved at the author’s convenience. Blake does this exceptionally effectively here by basically having us assume the narrator’s perspective is factual, and then slowly unfolding new pieces of information that, piece by piece, challenge the narrative we’ve accepted. Critically, everyone is truly doing their best, but hurt people hurt people and not everyone deals with the same situation the same way, and that can produce Realistic Big Misunderstandings.
This is such a well written narrative. I love it when a book sets up characters that I instinctively and intensely hate and then show me what a judgemental prick I am.