Boy did I not like listening to so many parts of this book. Poor kids seemed doomed at every turn. People trying to be helpful that end up scarring them more, trashy characters with little redeeming values showing some of the purest love and safety for them…
It’s disappointing to read so many reviews that say “everything about the book was great, until the adult had a sexual relationship with the child and acted like it was ok, that made it awful and it should be banned.”. I’d suggest y’all look into doing some shadow work.
The book doesn’t minimize the abuse. We hear his inner conflict and his shame and his full acknowledgement that he was wrong for crossing a line. He was arrested. He served several years in prison. The system prevented him from having any contact with the child. He had to register as a sex offender. Statutory rape is a real crime and does real damage and those are all appropriate punishments for it.
Just like the “happily ever after”
Nature of the story doesn’t minimize the ugliness of any of that, neither does the ugliness and wrongness of how their connection and bond got twisted and corrupted into a criminal sexual relationship minimize the beauty and depth of the bond they developed with one another outside the sexual and romantic stuff. Waivey and Donal grew up with parents in and out of prison, and when they weren’t in prison they were openly manufacturing, selling and using drugs and having sex with random people and being physically abusive right in front of the kids. Nobody could be bothered to pay any attention to being parents except to mentally abuse them ingraining them with twisted ideas about sex and germs and how dangerous it is to talk to people, etc. and it’s clear that the only reason either of them were ever clean, going to school, nourished, etc was because of Waivey. Surviving in a world like that, and then came Kellan. He loved both of the kids. He took responsibility for them. He put their welfare at the top of his mind and protected them as best he could. He was beyond any shadow of a doubt the most positive element of their life during the time he was a part of it.
And while it was not unexpected for Waivey to develop romantic feelings for someone who played that role in her life, it was Kellan’s responsibility to nip that in the bud and not let it progress. And he didn’t do that. He played into it and encouraged it and they ended up with a big twisted and illegal mess of things.
Kellan didn’t have any healthy role models growing up either. His childhood was similar to Waivey and Donal’s. He’s extremely empathetic and sees his own pain in others, like kids who are badgered about eating. He knows how much someone showing up and being there for him and loving him unconditionally would have meant to him growing up.
The challenge of the book as well as the world is to be able to hold all those truths in our minds at the same time. Nothing in the book tries to make the awful things ok or the good things bad. The moral of the story is just as much not “Kellan is a pedophile and that’s OK” as it is “Brenda is responsible for everything bad that happened to these kids because she turned her back on them when it was “too hard” to care for them.” Even Val and Liam have redeeming moments that show that they love their kids. Obviously that doesn’t translate to “they were great parents” but they also weren’t cartoonish demon characters. Everyone is incredibly flawed. Everyone has trauma. If Kellan and Waivey, or Donal, have kids, their story will be full of ways their messed up history causes trauma to the next generation. Life is messy and ugly. And it’s also beautiful. It just is. There are no easy answers or easy labels, sometimes the worst things come from beautiful situations and sometimes the greatest gifts come from the worst times in our lives.