But overall, this was … fine. I don’t know if I built it up too much in my head, because the description just sounded so good. But I found everything just slightly dull and flat. There was a real lack of tension, and I quite like domestic dramas where the tension is quiet and personal, but there just wasn’t any tension here. Each of the women has a very clear, stated goal, with no ambivalence and no complications. Over the course of the book, each of them — spoiler! — achieves her goal with a minimum of fuss, setbacks or personal growth. And it’s really that fuss, those setbacks and most of all those complicated relationships that make a story lively and realistic.
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