This book should have taken only a week of relaxed pleasure reading to finish, but instead took several months to finally complete.

The environment of the book is beautiful and Shaw is excellent at subtly extending the imagery of the island to the audience. This is the only part of the book that managed to captivate me. Each chapter divided amongst the small ensemble, often with only 3 or 4 pages before turning over to the next chapter and the next perspective, made it impossible for me to get into any scenes. The characters should have been relate-able, but I found that as soon as I was ready to engage with them, the focus would turn to a different character, in a different part of town, with an unrelated problem that consumes them.