Claire Stanford

In this novel, Evelyn, a mixed race (Caucasian Jewish/Japanese) young woman in San Francisco, tried to straddle the worlds of work, love, happiness and identity. She was employed as a contract researcher at the world’s third-most-popular internet company and lived with her longtime boyfriend Jamie. At times, I didn’t care for some of the decisions she made and wanted to jump into the book to make her do or say something different. I wonder how much of this character was simply the author putting her own life into the words of this book? This was fair reading, but not as immersive a reading experience as I usually like.

I could never get deep enough into this story. I think it’s because I never felt much of anything for the nebulous main character. I learned more about what she was tenuous about and not what she felt strongly about so I never had the sense that I actually knew her. Evelyn’s employer, Dr. Luce, had a more pronounced personality, but she was terribly annoying. I never felt a pull to continue reading this book in its entirety, but I did so to give the author a chance for me to read her whole story before forming an opinion about it.… (meer)