Twilight with cancer instead of vampires.

It would be more honest to give it a two star rating but I could never score the author of Lullabies for Little Criminals so low.

I wanted to love this book, I could see what O'Neill was trying to do but it just didn't work for me.

The plot is interesting but is massively let down by the choice of having a child narrator. The author wanted to tell an adult story and it was necessary for the story for the narrator to have an adult understanding of things. So why chose a child? It's entirely unconvincing, this is a child who is far too interested in adult things with only superficial interest in childish things as if the author kept remembering he was six.

Compare this to Room and it's almost cringey.

If you have read Moriarty's other books then you have read this one. Not a single theme, plot point or character (albeit renamed) that hasn't already appeared in her work.

Dull.

How on Earth is this so popular? The writing is just plain bad, it reminds me of what I hear those Twilight books are like. Clunky, childish, no nuance just awful. The only reason I am moved to write a review is because never before have I been so utterly baffled by a books popularity. True I gave up half way through (I can't remember the last time I did that) but the half I did make it through was read with a permanent expression of utter confusion.

This book has a character called Hazel.

This is a quote about her-

"her eyes as hazel as her Christian name."

Really.

The premise is interesting but I couldn't continue to read it because the writing was just so dire it was constantly making me laugh or eyeroll.